GI Joe Secrets: Part 3
by Jaenelle Angelline
Summary: Shana and Cam struggle to survive their captivity together as the Joes try to coordinate a rescue effort. Meanwhile, Snake Eyes discovers how deep his bond with Shana really is. COMPLETE.
1. Chapter 44: Amsterdam

**Chapter 44: Amsterdam**

Light flooded the room, and both Cam and Shana blinked in the sudden brightness.

They had been fed twice since they had been sold, so they estimated that at least a day had gone by. They hadn't been given the opportunity to talk; Shana's gag had been put back in, and Cam had been fitted with a ring and inflatable just like hers, and with the lights off, they hadn't been able to sign to each other. They had been able to hear each other breathing, and make unintelligible but still audible sounds behind the gags, but for the most part communication had been limited. When they came in with food, Cam was unchained first, gag released and she had to eat with the guards watching; then when she was done, she was chained again and a knife held to her throat while Shana was unchained and allowed to eat. The first time they had done this she had thought about trying to make a break for it, but they'd pressed the knife to Cam's throat hard enough to draw a thin line of blood and Shana quickly rethought her strategy. This wasn't going to be a good place to escape from.

Better to wait until they got to wherever this rich man who'd bought them lived. It would probably be easier to escape from his estate than it would be to escape from here. And she still needed to talk to Cam, find out how she'd gotten here to Amsterdam. Had she been captured in the jungle like Shana had? How was she dealing with this? She was full of questions but there was no chance to ask them, or to get answers.

Both women stirred from their cramped positions, sitting upright with their backs to the wall, wrists still firmly chained apart. Shana glanced warily at the two guards who entered the room and took up positions just inside the door; then in came the man who'd bought them, Master Damien Something, in his motorized wheelchair; and another man, shorter, thinner, with a thin, cadaverous face. Chills raced up and down her spine when she saw that man; there was something about him that was just wrong, from the thin pale face to the almost absurdly dark hair, the sunken eye sockets with eyes that burned like dark coals. Shana almost expected when his lips pulled back from his teeth in a smile that he was going to have pointed, vampiric fangs. His whole demeanor reminded her of a hungry hovering vulture waiting for its prey to settle before he landed and took a bite. And from the wary, half-afraid look on Cam's face, she knew Cam got the same impression too.

"Hans, these are my new slaves. The redhead was billed on the brochure as Testarossa, the other scarred one was called hole by her last master."

_Last Master?_ Shana looked at Cam, question in her eyes, but she didn't have time to think about that as Master Damien went on. "I paid an exorbitant sum for the two of them. The Testarossa is mine, no one will touch her, but the scarred one, the hole—she will be for the staff's amusement. I want you to look both of them over, make sure they are sound and fit, make sure I got what I paid for before I take them out of here."

Hans snickered. "It will be my pleasure, Master," and Shana felt herself recoil in disgust. His tone might have been subservient, but his eyes were full of glee as he bent over her. As his pale, skeletal hand reached for her, unreasoning fear took over and she kicked out, her only thought was to _keep him away from me!_

Hans stepped back from her as her foot sliced the air just past his ear. Damien laughed at his underling's discomfiture, then waved one of the guards over and took the cattle prod from his hand. "Come now. You're going to let me doctor look at you or things aren't going to go well for your friend." He scooted his wheelchair close enough to point the cattle prod at Cam.

Shana tried to hide her shudder—she remembered what it had felt like when she'd been shocked with that prod, and she wanted, with all her heart, to spare Cam that. _I don't know if she was ever hit with one when she was imprisoned before, but Jesus, getting trapped as a sex slave again has to be killing her. I don't know how she's taking all of this calmly. I have to try and save her if I can. This is a nightmare. _But she didn't lash out again as 'Hans' crept forward and released the valve on the inflatable gag in her mouth, then pulled it free.

"She has all of her teeth," the doctor said as he shone a penlight into Shana's mouth through the ring gag, checking her teeth as if she were a horse purchased at a horse sale. "Got a couple of fillings, but nothing major. She takes care of herself." He reached for Shana's arms, running his hands along her upper and lower arms. "Lots of muscle, not a lot of body fat. She may have lost weight recently but she hasn't lost enough of it for her health to suffer. Good strong bones, she ate well, had a balanced diet." He looked up at Damien. "All in all, almost perfect and in mint condition. You got yourself a collector's dream."

Shana wanted to kick him, to scream at him, something. Anything. _I am not a thing, a piece of property to be bought, sold, talked about like I'm not here, I am a human being and when I get free you're going to regret every minute of this!_

Damien noticed her anger and chuckled, making Shana even angrier. "The slave is angry. I find that funny, like a child who thinks that her temper tantrums matter to an adult." He smiled and turned to Cam. "Now her. I want you to check her thoroughly. That's a lot of scar tissue on her body and it looks like burns but I want to be sure. The dealer in charge of the pen she was in said that she came from Alan Singletary, and we all know what sort of condition Singletary's slaves come in when he decides he's tired of them. Do a full inspection. Oh, and you don't have to worry about being gentle."

He wasn't.

The gag was deflated and pulled out of Cam's mouth, and her teeth were similarly examined. "Her teeth are in pretty good shape, looks like a cavity starting back here but otherwise okay. Younger than your Testarossa."

He moved further down her body, grabbing her right breast, the intact one, and squeezed it so hard Cam cried out. Shana made an inarticulate sound of protest, but subsided as the cattle prod waved in her direction—and as Cam gave her a tiny, negative shake of her head. _Don't._

"She still has feeling in that one."

"She can still feel pressure. I wonder if she has surface feeling." Hans pulled his hand back and slapped her chest hard. Cam cried out again, her arms yanking against the chains and shackles that held them. She was crying, tears streaming down her face, babbling incoherently through the ring gag that held her mouth open. "Lee…lee…sa…" Please, please, stop.

Shana sobbed in anger and frustration and anguish. Her friend was being tortured, right in front of her, and there wasn't a damned thing she could do about it! She swore revenge on Hans and Damien and every person in the market, down to the guards still standing on either side of the door watching Cam's torture silently. _God damn you all to hell!_

Cam was still crying as Hans reached down and put his hands on her knees, attempting to pull them apart. She let him open her legs unresistingly, knowing what he was going to do, and willing to let him do it. _The more he does to me the less he'll do to Shana_. Her chest hurt, but her pleas had been mostly for their satisfaction.

She let him open her legs, knowing what he would see there and cringing in shame at the knowledge of what she looked like but willing to let him do whatever he wanted to do as long as they left Shana alone and as long as they never looked too closely at her head. She was experiencing a constant low-level headache from the tracer implanted in the skin under her ear, and the knowledge that it was capturing every sound made her flinch, but she shoved it away determinedly. _Don't think about it. Don't acknowledge it. Forget it's there. If they drug you, you might tell them it's there and if they know, they'll kill you immediately and that will be it. Shana will be on her own and you can't leave her alone in this mess. She's completely helpless and lost right now and you CANNOT leave her alone!_

And then it wasn't hard to forget as Hans reached between her legs, and oh Goddess, but this was so much worse than last time, so much worse than when she had been a captive of her aunt and uncle. There was a whole new level of shame and humiliation this time.

Hans saw her unwilling response, the way her hips arched toward him even as the rest of her body tensed and tried to stay still, and laughed. "Keep the prod on the redhead, boss," he grinned, and then beckoned the guard forward. "Unlock her. This will be the test—is she going to fight me knowing that her friend will pay the price for her resistance?"

Cam stared at him, anguish plain in her eyes as she stared at him, unbuttoning his pants, then at Shana, pinned up against the wall with the twin leads of the cattle prod held against her throat. It was a no-win situation; she could submit, or resist and watch Shana scream in agony—an electric shock to her neck would be particularly painful.

_I promised. I promised Snake Eyes I would try to save Shana from as much of this as possible. I've been through it before, I survived it then and I'll survive it again._ And she squeezed her eyes shut and let him do what he wanted.

He finished with her finally, and she couldn't think, couldn't breathe, couldn't do anything except curl up on the floor and cry. This was so violating, it was so much worse, oh Goddess, she hadn't thought it was going to be this hard when she volunteered for this…she wanted to go home, desperately, wanted Charlie to hold her, comfort her, wanted to curl up in his arms and cry and cry… _Charlie,_ she whimpered, although it came out as garbled nonsense. _Charlie, oh Goddess, I'm so sorry…you were right, oh please, please forgive me…_

Tears were streaming down Shana's face as she sat and watched helplessly. There was nothing she could do to make it any better. Anger and loathing and horror mixed with sorrow and pity as she heard Cam whimper Charlie's name, barely coherent behind her gag but still recognizable to Shana. _She's_ _**married.**__ She's married, oh God, when we get out of this if Charlie refuses to stick with her I'm going to kick his ass from here to kingdom come. Cam, oh Jesus, Cam, I'm so sorry…_she knew Cam could have fought the guy off; could have kept him from raping her, but not until Damien fried Shana's brain with the electric shock. And so she'd submitted rather than put Shana in danger.

_I'm her commanding officer. She's my subordinate. I'm supposed to be protecting her!_ And with that her military training kicked in, finally remembering the core of who she was after weeks of being drugged. _I'm her commanding officer. She's my subordinate. We are in a POW situation. I have a responsibility to shield and protect her to the best of my ability. I've lost sight of that, but that's essentially what this is, a POW capture. Just keep holding on to that, and we'll eventually get out._ Determination hardened her soul. _We are going to escape. We are going to get out of this._ And then, suddenly, she realized her legs were shaking, and cursed. _Withdrawal kicking in…_

Damien saw it too, and smiled as he prodded Shana's neck with the end of the cattle prod. "I enjoyed watching that, but now it's time to go. Hole. Get up and put on this military uniform." He threw a set of black/green/brown fatigues at her, US Army issue, but not the current pixilated version. "Practically all armies around the word use the green and black, so it doesn't matter what country I say you're from. Put that uniform on and lie down in that coffin." He saw her look. "No, I'm not going to kill you. I'm going to shoot you so full of drugs that you'll go into s death-like sleep, and when you wake up, we'll be home. I can sneak you through customs disguised as a couple of dead soldiers I'm taking home for a burial." His smile was like a cobra who'd just eaten a very large fat, tasty meal.

Cam struggled to her knees and grabbed for the clothing with tear-blinded eyes, and Shana saw blood_. You'll pay for this, I swear it! Charlie's going to tear you to pieces for what you just did, and I for one am not going to stop him._

Cam stuffed her limbs into the fake uniform and lay down in the coffin docilely. All of the fight seemed to have gone out of her; she didn't even try to take the ring out of her mouth. She didn't try to jerk her arm out of Hans's hands, barely even reacted when the needle slipped under the thin skin of the inside of her elbow, and as Damien started to unchain Shana and haul her to her feet, Shana saw a tiny bit of relief as her eyes closed. _Go ahead, Cam. Sleep. God knows you need it. Maybe Charlie will be there in your dreams, for you. It'll be kinder than staying awake and having to remember what this son of a bitch just did to you._

She got dressed in the uniform and lay down in the coffin, feeling the drug craving sneak into her consciousness. She offered her arm almost eagerly for the needle, and as she felt the first rush of euphoria, then the dizzy sleepiness, she prayed desperately that when they woke, they would be somewhere where they could attempt an escape, because she didn't know how Cam could survive any more of that.

She didn't know if she could survive seeing that again.

Damien smiled as Hans closed the lid on the Testarossa's coffin. "All set?"

"All set," Hans grinned and rubbed his hands, "You sure got a couple of good ones, boss, Whatever you paid for them was worth it. Did you see the look on the hole's face when I hurt her?"

"Did you see the look on the Testarossa's face? She looked like you were hurting her little sister." Damien's smile turned thoughtful as he looked at the two coffins with their occupants sleeping inside. "When they wake up I have to get one of them to tell me how they know each other. I have never seen a bond that strong between two people, let alone two slaves."

"Whatever you want boss. As long as I can have the hole."

"Oh, of course. You and Rosa both. You know Rosa would love the pleasure of torturing a female—it's been a few slaves now since I let her practice her skills. Hole is ideal for it; she's already scarred, no one's going to notice a few more."

"Or a few less if Rosa decides she wants to keep some skin as a souvenir."

Damien smiled thinly. "Not that it'll matter anyway, this is the hole's last stop. She wouldn't even have sold if I hadn't discovered her connection with the Testarossa. Another couple of days she'd be killed, loaded on an oceangoing vessel and dumped over the side as soon as the vessel got far enough away from harbor that the bodies wouldn't wash up." It was the usual disposal method for those the dealers couldn't sell. "All right, let's get going. I do have to be back in the office in a couple of days, but I want to settle them in on my private island in Fiji first."


	2. Chapter 45: New York

**Chapter 45: New York**

"Docket number 62-0125637, People vs Leo Yu, three counts of possession of child porn."

Judge Lena Petrovsky picked up her glasses, frowned at the paperwork in front of her, then looked up at Alex Cabot, standing poker-faced behind the defense table. "He's been in jail since his arrest on child porn, Ms. Cabot?"

"Our detectives searched Mr. Yu's apartment and found numerous pictures of children displayed in various sex acts, many of them violent. The People are unwilling to let him go based on the fact that he is a travel agent with multiple ties in and out of the country and has traveled extensively outside the US, which is also why we are asking for remand."

At the defense table the defense attorney beside Mr. Yu stood up. "Your Honor, this is ridiculous. My client is a US citizen, born here and raised here, has a job and is well-respected in his field. To keep him in jail over a few pictures is unreasonable—"

"Those 'few pictures', as you call them, are of children clearly under the age of majority tied up, beaten, raped—"

Petrovsky held up a hand. "Save it for the trial, Ms Cabot. Bail is set at $100,000, cash or bond."

"Mr. Yu has a few clients who are willing to post bail." The defense attorney held a hand out toward three well-dressed individuals in the gallery, and Alex raised her eyebrow. So Yu's clients were going to post his bail, presumably so that he wouldn't have an opportunity to talk to the cops. Alex wondered if any of those men's names were in the ledger as she turned to the gallery at the back of the room, nodded slightly.

At the back of the room Olivia tapped a text message into her cellphone, then heaved herself up off the bench, helped along by Clayton, standing beside her. Although she was supposed to be on bed rest, she'd absolutely insisted on coming, and Clayton had accompanied her, half out of desire to see justice done for one of his soldiers but also to keep an eye on Liv. Although Olivia stated firmly that she was fine and didn't need a male to 'hover', Alex noticed with a bit of amusement that she was accepting Clayton's help and even letting him fuss over her a bit—which the anxious father seemed all too happy to do. _So_ _much for the hands-off approach he was going to take,_ she thought. _All right. Trap should be springing in three, two, one…_

And exactly on cue, here came Fin and John through the door of the courtroom, making a beeline for Yu even as the three men from the gallery were standing around the table talking to the defense attorney. And to Alex's surprise, Amaro and Rollins followed them in.

The four detectives nodded to her slightly, almost imperceptibly; she in turn nodded back. They'd already decided how they were going to handle this, and Alex had to admit to a certain measure of angry satisfaction as she watched John approach the defense attorney; apparently, since he was the first one to ever meet Cam, he'd decided to finish what he'd started. "Mr. Leo Yu?" he asked, unnecessarily, since Yu was the only Asian in the room.

Yu turned and looked at John. "Yes?" he said, frowning.

"Leo Yu, you are under arrest for facilitating child prostitution, sex trafficking of a child by force, and transportation of a minor with intent to engage in illegal sexual activity. You have the right to remain silent…" and he rattled off Yu's Miranda rights.

One of the men who had said he would post bond for Yu stepped forward belligerently. 'Here now, what's all this?" he said angrily. "He was just released on bond and we're posting it!"

"I would like to know what's going on too," Lena Petrovsky said from where she was sitting behind her desk. "Alex, care to explain?"

Amanda Rollins stepped forward, holding her badge. "Detective Amanda Rollins, Your Honor. New evidence has just come to light that warrant Mr. Yu being charged with child prostitution charges."

Fin had stepped between the belligerent man and the rest of the courtroom. "Excuse me. You mind telling me your name?"

"I don't have to tell you anything," the man blustered, but Lena's voice from the judge's bench stopped him.

"Actually yes you do. The police are technically officers of the court so if one of them asks you to identify yourself it's usually a good idea to do so. If you don't wish to, however, I can always charge you with contempt and send you to jail, in which case they would have to know who you are anyway. So you can answer him here or answer him at the station, whichever suits you best."

"David Biehl," the man said almost angrily.

Fin put a questioning note in his voice. "David Biehl? Of 243 West 71st St?"

"Yes, that's me. Why are you asking?"

For answer Fin whipped out his handcuffs. "David Biehl, you are under arrest for sexual assault of a child, and travel with intent to commit sexual assault on a child. You have the right…"

Out the corner of her eye Alex saw the two remaining men start to edge furtively toward the door, which was suddenly blocked by several large bodies wearing military fatigues—Clayton, Ettienne and Conrad; Allie and Liv were tucked safely out of range in the back of the courtroom. The three Joes did their best impression of a brick wall as Amaro and Rollins came up. "Can we have your names please?"

"Reggie Chatham."

"Devon Ross."

Amaro took Ross. "Devon Ross, you are under arrest for sexual assault of a child and travel with intent to commit sexual assault on a child. You have the right to remain silent…" On the other side, Rollins was doing the same thing to Chatham.

Judge Petrovsky waited until the officers had escorted the four men from the courtroom before she said, "I'd like to see prosecution in my chambers please." From the doorway, Ettienne moved slightly; Alex turned her head, caught his eye, shook her head imperceptibly and he sat down as she followed Lena to the judge's chambers.

"So I assume the other three men who your detective just arrested were guilty too?" Alex was already fishing the ledger out of the evidence bag and opening it.

"Yes. Those names cropped up when we did a routine record search through the files that Yu's travel agency provided us. They were agency files, not Mr. Yu's own, which means they are not privileged, and they were opened to us with no warrant necessary. The detectives made copies of each page of this ledger with all the names and I assume they found matches to the names in the ledger to the names in Mr. Yu's files."

"How many of the names match?"

"I haven't yet looked at all the files myself, Lena, but I assume there will be a lot. Just the fact that three of the people who were in the courtroom today are connected with Yu is a statement on its own."

"I thought you cut a deal with him to get him to cooperate. How is that turning out?"

Alex sighed and slumped. "The information he gave us was accurate and it was sufficiently detailed enough for our operative to infiltrate the human trafficking operation. It was horrible and traumatic and the two officers who went to insert her came back looking like they'd been tortured; it was apparently very hard on them too, they said they'd never seen anything so horrible. I contacted my boss at the ICC and they're investigating options now as far as shutting the market down but we can't do so until the operative we inserted leaves the slave market. She's wearing a GPS-enabled implanted microchip just like the one the ICC put on me when I went out into the jungle. She said that when the chip stops moving for two weeks, that's when we'll know she found Shana and we can go and get both of them.  
"Or she could be dead."

"That's also a possibility, but they tweaked the chip so that the tone of the frequency beep changes if she dies, if her heart stops for any reason. Wherever she is, if she's dead they will get her. They don't leave anyone behind—not this unit."

Petrovsky shook her head. "Thank God for the men and women in our armed forces who are willing to do things like this because honestly, Alex, I don't know if I would."

"I don't know if I could either. But these two soldiers—Shana's the one who went missing and Cam is the one who went to find her—they are very, very close friends and will do pretty much anything for each other. I think that's about to be tested."

"I think so too." Petrovsky shook off her melancholy and said, "All right. You go work on that case, Alex. And good luck."

"All right. Give me a rundown. How did you know the three men who came to bail out Yu were clients?"

"Liv took a picture of them when they came in and sent them to us. Morales, back at the station, ran the photos through facial recognition and came up with names. We checked the names with the electronic client files Yu's agency so graciously provided us and then checked the photocopies of the ledger pages. Each of those three men popped up in the travel Agency's log as Yu's client, each one appears in Cam's ledger as one of her molesters. Biehl, in particular—he spent nearly ten grand over the three years Cam was captive. His favorite activity was 'hiking' and 'camping'."

"Oh my God." Rollins looked sick. By now the travel brochure had made its rounds of the station and these detectives, and they all know what 'hiking', 'fishing', 'camping' and the other terms meant as applied to Cam. There was, in fact, an index in the front of the ledger explaining what each term meant, which Alex loved because it meant there would be absolutely no way anyone could mistake these 'sports' for ordinary outdoor activities.

"So give it to me straight. How many of the names in Yu's client files appear in the ledger? I told Judge Petrovsky that even the three we have that do match the ledger and the client file makes a statement."

"Three." Rollins sat back in her chair, folded her arms, and a faintly malicious smile crossed her face. "Try eighteen."

"Eigh_teen_?" Alex's voice cracked on the last syllable. She'd been elated at three; she'd been hoping for twice that, maybe six or eight, because that would prove that there was a correlation between the travel agency's clients and Cam's Aunt and uncle. But… "Eighteen?"

"That we know of so far. We're actually still looking. But yes, there were at least eighteen. That means this is a ring of pedophiles. This is going to be a huge bust, Alex."

Alex was pale as she said, "The bust doesn't matter. Can you imagine what Cam felt having all these people pay money to hurt her? At least eighteen people we know of paid to rent the cabin. They paid to rape her. They paid to abuse her, torture her, molest her."

Rollins said, very softly, "Chatham and Ross visited the cabin four times in three years. Together. They stayed a week each time."

"Gang raped. She was gang-raped. Oh God." Alex sat down hard as the enormity of what Cam had suffered came back to her, and for the first time she understood what a tremendous sacrifice it had been for her to come up with this plan, to volunteer to go in and get Shana out. She wondered if anyone at base, other than Conrad and Allie, who had gone with her to insert her, knew what a sacrifice she had made, physically and emotionally. "She was still going through CPTSD when she went back in. This is…God, I don't even know if she's going to come back sane." The thought of Cam losing her mind was horrifying. _Please, God, please don't let that happen!_

"There's nothing we can do about the past." Amaro's voice broke into the conversation quietly. "The only thing we can do now is build such an airtight case against each and every one of these bastards so they pay for what they did to her."

Alex shook off her fear. "I agree. Let's work on nailing these guys for the rest of their pitiful little lives. And keep an eye out for other victims."

The soft tap on Shana's room door broke into Snake Eyes' stupor.

He stared at the door for a long moment, battling his desire to be left alone with the desire to know if maybe she'd been found, but eventually he did get up and open the door.

Conrad stood there, and Snake Eyes momentarily debated shutting the door in the other man's face. Misery sometimes didn't want company, and Snake Eyes was definitely miserable; there had been a hard, tight knot of fear and anxiety in the pit of his stomach for the past four weeks and there was nothing that was going to make that knot go away until he saw Shana again. He wanted her back, damn it, he wanted her back more than anything else in his life, and seeing Conrad, which whom Shana had had a prior relationship with when they'd been posted at Fort Benning together, reminded him that he shared Shana with this man too.

However, that had been before Shana had known him; since she'd met him, there had been no one else in her heart, her affections, in her bed since she'd met Snake Eyes. She was his, and he was hers, and dear God why had he been such an idiot? He had wasted precious moments with her. Sitting in the darkness of her room, surrounded by her and her things, reminded him of every fight he'd ever had with her, every time he'd ever gotten mad at her, every time he'd ever said no to something she wanted to do, some little pleasure she wanted to share with him and yet couldn't because he refused it out of his own selfishness, his own reluctance to let others see his scars. In trying to cater to his whims she'd had to lead a necessarily limited life, and he now regretted fiercely every missed opportunity, every lost chance, every smile he could have given her but hadn't.

_When you get back, Shana, I will never deny you anything again. Ever. Life is so short and I never knew…I never realized just how selfish I was being. God, I am so sorry, I will spend the rest of my life making it up to her if you just give her back to me! I swear I will never be so selfish again, she will have whatever she wants, whatever she needs, just please, __**please give her back to me**__!_

He stepped back and let Duke step into the room, and he saw the other man's eyes widen as he saw the photo albums spread out n the floor of the room, showing a Shana that no one except Snake Eyes had ever seen. Shana, completely free and uninhibited, conforming to no one's expectations but her own; laughing, happy, hair flying loose in the wind as she ran on a beach, ran through a sunny meadow, ate an ice cream cone at Coney Island, dug into a chili dog from a street vendor. And the photo in Snake Eyes hand, that he'd been looking at before Conrad knocked-Shana, wearing a dress—one of the few occasions she'd ever done so—at their cabin, a short bright emerald sundress that left her long, strong, tanned legs bare, toes buried in the soft grass, caught in mid-leap by the camera Snake Eyes had been holding. She'd seen a butterfly in the meadow by the cabin, and had tried, on a whim, to catch it so Snake Eyes could photograph it. He'd suggested getting bug spray—one short spritz in the air in the direction of the butterfly would have incapacitated it, but Shana had been indignant at the very suggestion and insisted on trying to catch it herself. Over the past few days Snake Eyes had realized that Shana was like that butterfly; but he'd incapacitated her with his own selfishness, hobbling her by using her own emotions against her.

"I…I just…wanted to tell you. I didn't know if you'd heard yet or not, I didn't know if you'd be interested, but…Alex arraigned Yu in court today for what he did to Cam. And Liv's detective friends found out that there were eighteen people in Yu's travel agency client files who paid to rent the cabin—and Cam."

Snake Eyes stopped short. Eighteen? Had he heard right? Eighteen men had raped and tortured Cam? But Conrad wasn't looking at him, he was hurrying on, and Snake Eyes, listening to the sound of his voice, heard it shaking with emotion, and empathy swept him. As much as he missed Shana, he wasn't the only one. Conrad had loved her too, in his own way, at Fort Benning; loved her enough to understand that when she came to Joe base and fell in love with Snake Eyes, there was no room in her heart for Conrad anymore and he'd let her go instead of fighting for her. Like Shana had released the butterfly. Unlike Snake Eyes himself, who had given Shana the illusion of freedom but held her in tighter chains that anyone ever could, not her father, with all his expectations; not her mother and sister with their expectations and desires; not her brothers, not her career.

"I knew, intellectually, that human trafficking was going on, but…I never realized just how horrible the reality was. I guess…what I'm trying to say…is that I understand what Shana and Cam are going through, and I want them back as much as you and Charlie do, and I swear whatever it take s t bring them back, I'll do. I swear." And Conrad turned and left abruptly, hands shoved in his pockets to stop them from shaking, leaving Snake Eyes staring at his retreating back in disbelief and sudden empathy.


	3. Chapter 46: Fiji

**Chapter 46: Fiji**

Something felt different.

Shana lay still for long moments, trying to identify what was different about her awakening this time than last time. She kept her eyes closed, training still strong even after her time in captivity; assess first, then decide what you'll do based on the assessment.

Her arms were no longer shackled, tied or chained.

She cracked open one eye. Yes, that was true; although each wrist was still circled by a two-inch wide strip of raw skin, the shackles themselves were gone. There was a thin pillow under her head, and what felt like a thin sleeping bag under her between her body and the floor.

And she was lying down instead of sitting up shackled; that was also a relief, after so many days of not being able to do so, lying down and stretching out was a luxury.

Then another thought intruded. _Cam!_ It was that thought that made her sit up.

She was in some kind of cell. About eight feet square, rough rock on the back wall and the wall to her right; directly in front of her was a barred wall/door reminiscent of the front of a prison cell, and off to her left—that wall was made of bars like the front of the cell, there was a gate in it too, and on the other side of that gate was Cam.

She was still asleep. When they had gotten here apparently someone had stripped them of the fake uniforms they'd worn; Shana could well imagine that if someone in customs had intercepted 'Master Damien' and his 'cargo' of two coffins, they would have simply passed him on through when he told them he was taking soldiers home for burial. Such an easy way to traffick people; bodies in coffins. Shana was discovering more and more about this trafficking underground and she hated every last detail. _The people who can do this are sick. Why in God's name is this allowed to go on? What is being done to stop this from happening?_ She had fuzzy memories of the two women on the cargo vessel who had helped her as best they could. _I wonder where they are now._

But she couldn't worry too much about them; her immediate priority was Cam. _She is my subordinate and I am her commanding officer and I have to try and protect and shield her as much as possible. She's already been through sexual slavery when she was fifteen—God, but this has to be killing her. I saw what she looked like when that Hans guy was raping her. Jesus. _Shana was never going to be able to forget the sound of Cam begging for it to stop—and crying for Charlie when it was over.

She was able to coordinate her movement enough to get to the barred gate between her cell and Cam's and look through it. Cam's cell was identical to her own; eight feet square, rock back wall and side wall, barred door in front, barred door between their cells. She too had a thin sleeping bag between her body and the floor, and a lumpy pillow.

Shana studied Cam for a few moments. She didn't see any obvious signs of abuse that could indicate how long Cam had been in captivity; her wrists had raw shackle marks on them, although they weren't as bad as Shana's own wrists. Her body, however, did have scar tissue all over it, and because that scar tissue didn't have blood vessels, there wouldn't be any bruises showing.

She went to the door of her own cell, looked out. The cell opened out onto a much, much larger room apparently cut out of the same rock that formed their two cells. There were two other cells across the room from hers and Cam's, but those two were empty.

But the room in between looked like an exhibition room in the Tower of London.

She'd been there once before; the Joes had been traveling back from a mission on one of those rare civilian flights and the plane had been diverted to London because of a technical malfunction. During the layover there Shana had taken the chance to do some sightseeing (and Court and Allie had wanted to go shopping) and she had visited the museum at the Tower of London.

She identified a rack, with rollers to stretch a person on it until their joints dislocated; she saw other implements hanging on hooks from the walls; whips, canes, all sorts of things with which to hit someone with, and nearby an upright post that Shana could easily imagine being used as a whipping post. An upright frame with all kinds of eyebolts in various positions set into a bed of concrete so that if someone were to be tied in it they would be held completely still. And in one corner, a full surgical theater; tiled floor that would be easy to wash, a drain in the center, a stainless steel table bristling with straps, a sink in the corner, and cabinets and cubbyholes and drawers that Shana could easily imagine held medical instruments.

_We have to escape. We have to get out of here. Jesus. They're probably not going to kill me because I'm 'valuable' but they are almost certainly going to use all those things on Cam. Oh God._ She went to the door that separated her cell from Cam's and called, "Cam. Cam, wake up."

Cam stirred, groggily. "Sh…Shana…"

"It's me, Cam, I'm here. It's going to be okay. Come on, open your eyes." She was gratified, moments later, to see Cam sitting up, blinking, trying to stretch and get her limbs working. "We have to get out of here. Look." She pointed out there and Shana watched Cam's face go pale as she studied the torture chamber in front of their cells. "Cam…I haven't had a chance to ask—how did you get here?"

For answer, Cam pointed up—and Shana cursed aloud as she saw what she'd missed before; the small security cameras cleverly tucked into hidden rocky outcroppings in not only their cell but in the torture chamber beyond. Cam's hands flashed in sign language. _They're watching us. Better to try and communicate this way, but I don't know if they know sign language so no personal information until we know if they know sign—_

And as if on cue, the barred door at the far end of the torture chamber, the one that closed off a hallway cut into the rock of their prison, opened, and here came Damien Kennedy, followed by Hans Keil and a tall, dark-haired woman whose olive skin marked her as being of Mediterranean descent. His wheelchair rolled to a smooth stop in the center of the room and he sat there for a moment, regarding them. "Resourceful," he said finally. "I didn't expect you would see the cameras so soon, and I didn't expect that you would have a clandestine means of communication. There is more to both of you than meets the eye." He cocked his head. "For your information, I do know sign language, so what personal information is it that you don't want to share with me? I will have it out of you sooner or later, but you can make it easier on yourself and just tell me now."

Shana glared at him, folded her arms, and kept her mouth stubbornly shut.

Damien actually smiled, a cold, cruel smile that made Shana's skin crawl. "Resistance is futile, especially for a slave such as yourself. You will break, sooner or later. And so will the other slave there." He indicated Cam with a flick of his eye.

Shana refused to rise to the bait.

He smiled and rolled his chair out of the way. "So. Let me introduce you to your slave handlers. Hans Keil you have already met. He was a doctor in Germany until his…personal hobby…was discovered. Specifically, he was raping his underage patients as they lay in drugged sleep, then performing unsanctioned and unknown abortions on the little girls he accidentally impregnated. It was eventually found out, and he lost his medical license there as well as becoming a wanted fugitive. His country even issued a Red Notice through INTERPOL." INTERPOL, Shana knew, was the international police; they would take wanted notices from different countries and issue what was called a 'Red Notice'—an international warrant out for the person's arrest. Many times the Red Notices were indeed for valid criminals who had committed heinous crimes, but many countries who had oppressive regimes and dictatorship-type governments would ask INTERPOL for a Red Notice for a political dissident or someone who had done nothing wrong except disagree with how the country was being run, and there was a lot of criticism among the international community who felt that such practices constituted abuse of the INTERPOL notice system.

However, she couldn't argue with the Red Notice for this man. Hans Keil, frankly, just gave her the creeps. She'd hated him on sight before she'd known he raped little girls.

"And your other handler." The woman stepped forward. She was beautiful, with classically Italian features, chiseled face and sculpted cheekbones, black hair in spiral curls around her olive-skinned face; but her eyes held no warmth, no light, no expression except one of cruelty. Her smile, as she looked Shana over, was full of predatory delight, the expression of a cat who has seen a pet mouse trapped in a cage and couldn't wait for the cage to open before springing on the mouse inside. In fact, her demeanor and attitude reminded Shana of Sandra, back in the Congo. "This is Rosa Capelletti. She used to be a torturer for a rather well-known Mafia family, and she lives here because I find her skills…useful…and she stays here because she also has a Red Notice out for her. I shield her and in return she helps me with some useful services, like persuading stubborn slaves to cooperate." He smiled and addressed the woman. "Rosa, my dear, the redhead is off limits unless I specifically say you can play with her. The scarred one, the hole, is useful because threatening her keeps the redhead in line, but otherwise she's all yours. Just don't incapacitate her beyond the point of being useful—I'm thinking of making the Testarossa into a fight slave but if she refuses the hole has to be available for me to threaten to make the Testarossa perform."

"_Si_," The cold, cruel smile she turned on Cam was unpleasant and made Shana's skin crawl. _Leave her alone!_ she wanted to scream, but really, there was nothing that she could do to prevent them from doing whatever they wanted.

Damien tilted his head. "I have a question for you, now, and I want an answer. How do you two know each other? And don't give me the story about having grown up together as children. Testarossa had two white parents and there isn't a single drop of white blood in the hole."

Shana folded her arms and stayed silent. Cam didn't volunteer any information either.

"I will ask one more time. Make it easy on yourselves because I will have an answer one way or another. How do you know each other?"

Shana's blood ran cold at the 'one way or another'. She could well imagine what a sadist like him would do to the two of them, but she simply couldn't tell him. _Snake Eyes is out there looking for me._ She knew that as surely as she knew her own name. _He said he will never stop looking for me until he finds me and I should hold on for him. If I tell him that we're both US Army officers he'll kill both of us at once and I'll never see Snake Eyes again…and Cam will never see Charlie again. I'm the commanding officer here, she's my subordinate and I am responsible for her. I can't let that happen._ And when her eyes flicked to Cam, sitting in her cell with a similarly stubborn look on her face, she knew Cam had reached the same conclusion.

"So be it. You have chosen the more difficult way, but I will still get the answer. Rosa. The pentothal. Not too much, I just want the answer to one question." Rosa headed off to the surgery suite of the torture chamber, coming back moments later with a needle and a vial of liquid. Shana watched her siphon off some of the drug into the needle. "You will hold still for Rosa to inject you or your friend will suffer the consequences."

It was that threat only that forced Shana to stay still; every part of her wanted to get that needle away from her. She had enough of drugs, she could feel her body still craving whatever it was they'd given her on the African trip and whatever it was they had been giving her doses of while at the market. She felt the now-familiar prick as the needle delivered its drug into her, and barely five minutes later she felt the euphoric lassitude sink in. _There's nothing to worry about,_ the drug whispered to her mind, _nothing to fear, nothing matters here, no need to think because nothing matters…_

Cam wanted to scream as Shana's eyes rolled up into her head and she slumped bonelessly to her blanket. "No," she whimpered, pressed up against the barred gate that separated her cell from Shana's. "No, stop, please don't, not again…" but it was too late.

"What is your real name?" Damien asked, his voice low and soothing, and Shana's mouth opened, and she whispered, "Shana."

"Are you a slave?"

"No."

"Where were you captured?"

"Africa."

"Where do you live?"

"Fort Wadsworth, New York."

"Are you a soldier's wife?"

"No."

"Are you a soldier?"

"Snake Eyes…" came the whispered reply. "Snake Eyes, come get me please…sweetheart, I'm sorry, please, come get me…"

"Snake Eyes? Is that a soldier's name?"

She ignored him. "Snake Eyes…please, you said you'd find me…" And then she stopped speaking English and switched to a lilting language that Cam recognized as a language Shana and Allie both knew but that few others on base seemed to. The two women would switch to this language when they wanted their conversation to be private.

"I don't know that language. Damn it, I don't know that language!" Damien looked up at Rosa. "Is that something you recognize?"

The Italian woman shook her head. Keil, when Damien looked at him, shook his head, and Cam did too when he looked at her, and thank Goddess he believed her. Damien sat fuming as Shana rambled on, sometimes flat, sometimes singsong, at one point even breaking into song. It was, as Cam concentrated on listening with her face impassive so he couldn't read the thoughts behind her eyes, likely some Celtic language; and when Shana started singing she recognized it as an Irish drinking song she'd heard one night in a bar, though she didn't know what the words meant. That was fine; she didn't want to know what the words meant, didn't want to know what Shana was saying. What she didn't know couldn't be tortured out of her later.

What did concern Cam was Shana's answers before the drug really kicked in and she changed to Gaelic. She had told Damien the location of the classified base at Fort Wadsworth, had told him she had been captured in Africa, and told him her real name. Cam knew that if she'd given her last name Damien could have easily searched it on the net and come up with the MIA soldier being looked for by the US Army. It was still a potential risk, and she couldn't ignore what kind of danger that represented. Apparently Shana knew instinctively on a subconscious level that she shouldn't tell them she was a soldier… but she had spilled some valuable classified information; Damien just didn't know how classified it actually was. Cam knew that Shana had undergone narcointerrogation resistance training, but whatever tactics she'd used to resist whatever questions might have been asked of her two weeks before in the Congo were starting to wear thin.

Cam concluded, reluctantly, that she couldn't afford to tell Shana about the implanted tracer. She couldn't risk that getting out. She hated to feel like she couldn't trust Shana, her best friend and commanding officer, but that was the way it was going to have to go. They were here, wherever 'here' was, and assuming Damien wouldn't transport them anywhere else (which he likely wouldn't, given the look and feel of this torture chamber and these cells) the two week countdown would have already begun. They would have to survive here for two weeks. Two weeks only…and they would be free.

She would have to keep the tracer a secret for two weeks. _I can do this. I can do this. I'll survive whatever I have to and they'll come get us in two weeks. _And so she curled up on the sleeping bag, eyes closed, trying not to hear Shana's disjointed, incoherent babbling in her native language, and Cam mentally switched her mind to her native Iroquois, preparing for the moment in which they would inject her with the drug and try to force her to talk.


	4. Chapter 47: Fiji

**Chapter 47: Fiji**

Damien waited impatiently for the Testarossa's babbling to end. He had no idea what language she was speaking; and fumed irritably as he waited for it to wear off. He had never run across this before; it had never occurred to him that one of the slaves he purchased might slip back into their native language when drugged. The idea was as completely foreign to him as the language itself. He hadn't used pentothal often, and particularly not on a slave—they had no information that interested him, they were themselves of no use to him except for sex and power they could give him. But these two, these slaves…

He stole a glance in the other cell. Hole was curled up on her blanket, eyes tightly closed. He wondered idly what it was thinking, then dismissed it as he heard the Testarossa stop babbling, a sure sign that the tiny dose of pentothal Rosa had given her was starting to wear off.

Ten minutes later, Shana finally opened her eyes.

"So." And he didn't bother to hide his anger as he stood in front of the sleepily-blinking Testarossa. "You've been exposed to the pentothal before. It's the only way you would have known how to give me all kinds of nonsense instead of what I wanted." He was angry—no, furious. "Rosa. Give some to the hole. Same amount, same dosage. We'll see if I can get it out of her." He looked at Shana, and the cruel smile bloomed as he saw Shana's suddenly pale face. "So you knew I would get nothing from you…but your friend isn't similarly protected. Let's use that." He gestured sharply. "Rosa—inject her."

Cam tried to cringe away from the needle but Rosa moved like a striking snake, grabbing her arm and pressing the needle into her skin, then taking a step back and waiting for the inevitable to begin.

Shana already knew Cam had a relatively high metabolic rate; she burned calories faster than even Shana herself did because of her inability to store body fat, so it was only going to be a matter of a few minutes before she slipped into the euphoria, and then into the numb, unthinking trance that marked the drug's potency. She sat, waiting tensely, for it to happen.

Except that it didn't.

Their first sign that something was wrong was when Cam's eyes rolled back into her head and her respiration increased until it sounded like she was hyperventilating. Moments later she made a choking, gagging noise and her body fell over from its sitting position as she choked and gagged and retched. They hadn't been fed in a while, there was nothing left in her stomach to come up, but she was choking and gagging, and then suddenly started jerking, convulsing, spasmodically.

"Cam! CAM!" Shana screamed, crawling somewhat uncoordinatedly to the other side of her cell and trying to reach her friend through the bars. "Cam, oh God, please…" She had seen a reaction like this once, during her training at Quantico; someone had shown them a video of a man who was allergic, of all things, to barbitol-type drugs, and he had reacted the same way Cam was. "She's allergic! She's having an allergic reaction, Jesus, please, stop it!" But there was nothing they could do—Rosa blinked in amazement, having never tried barbitol on a slave who was allergic.

And then, Cam stopped. Just…stopped. She froze, eyes wide, her entire body frozen in mid-jerked, and her chest froze too. Shana screamed and threw herself at the gate, stretching her arms toward Damien, her only thought to get inside that cell before Cam died. "She's stopped breathing, it's called anaphylaxis, she's going to die, please, please, let me in with her!" And somewhat to her surprise, a pale-faced Rosa hit a button, and with a grinding of metal on metal the gate between Shana's cell and Cam's opened, and Shana darted through, going to her knees beside her stricken friend.

"Cam. Cam, speak to me, please. Cam." But Cam was too far gone. Her eyes were full of panic and starting to glaze over as her body fought for oxygen denied her because the drug had paralyzed her diaphragm and prohibited her from taking breath. Shana quickly gauged the small amount she'd been given, knew it wouldn't last long, and she could get Cam through this if she could just keep giving her friend air; so she took a deep breath, and blew it into Cam's mouth, forcibly re-inflating the girl's lungs; then she pulled back, placed her hands on top of each other and pushed down on Cam's chest, hard, the upward movement attempting to simulate the involuntary movement of her diaphragm to force air into her lungs.

Cam exhaled.

Shana gave her air in another involuntary inhale, then forced it out again in an involuntary exhale. And again. And again.

Cam lay completely helpless, the paralysis resulting from her allergic reaction to the drug rendering her completely incapable of doing anything herself. Her eyes were the only part of her that moved, that showed she was still alive, full of fear and helplessness. Shana's arms ached, her knees hurt from kneeling on the concrete, her raw wrists were bleeding from the activity. She felt light-headed, dizzy, hyperventilating herself in an attempt to ensure both she and Cam got enough air to continue until Cam could breathe on her own again, but she didn't dare stop. Her arms shook with the strain, and she barely realized there were tears streaming down her face as she worked on Cam's body. "You're not dying on me, I swear!" she cried helplessly as she leaned in to give Cam another breath. "Come on, Cam, breathe, damn you, breathe!"

It seemed like an eternity later that she felt a flutter in Cam's ribcage, under her hands. Her diaphragm was trying to work, trying to get on about its business of getting air into Cam's body, and Shana only found it necessary to help Cam along with a few more breaths until she took a huge, shuddering breath all at once and choked a bit, then plainly started breathing on her own.

Shana was about to check on Cam's paralysis when a hand roughly seized a handful of her hair, and she cried out as Hans Keil dragged her backward, away from Cam, through the gate back into her own cell, and dropped her as he exited the cell. Shana lunged despairingly for the gate between their cells, but it closed before she could get through it, and she had to watch helplessly as Hans and Rosa entered Cam's cell, knelt beside her.

Damien was leaning forward in his wheelchair, and Rosa nodded her head. "She's okay. She just experienced anaphylaxis. She'll be fine. But, seeing as she's paralyzed right now…Hans would like to…"

She didn't have to finish her sentence; Damien smiled a sadistic grin as he sat back in his chair and started to unbutton his pants. "Go right ahead. I'll watch. And when you're done, if you take the Testarossa out, I want to give her a test drive."

Shana screamed in helpless anger and frustration and horror as Hans positioned himself in front of Cam. There was no need to tie her; with her muscles still locked and paralyzed, she couldn't fight the German doctor.

Damien went to the wall, pushed a button, spoke. What he said was too low for Shana to hear, but moments later the barred door leading to the hallway that Damien, Rosa and Hans had just come down opened and in walked six more people. Men, all solidly built; and when they saw what Hans was doing, their grins of glee were almost identical. Shana fled, unable to watch, and curled up in a corner of her cell, shaking with sobs, fingers in her ears to try and block out the sound of Cam screaming. The drug had kicked in, done what it was supposed to do, finally; it had suppressed voluntary thought and all that was left was blind animal instinct, leaving Cam unable to think, unable to do anything but feel and react.

Shana cringed as her own cell door opened, but her own drug-weakened strength was no match for the three men who came in. They dragged her through the torture chamber and threw her with bone-bruising force onto the medical table, and she wept helplessly and thrashed as they strapped her wrists down, as they ran a strap across her hips, as they strapped her thighs and calves down.

And then Shana stared in shock as Damien rose from his wheelchair and walked over to her where she was pinned down like a captive butterfly waiting for dissection. "Oh, yes. That's my little secret, you see," Damien smiled as he stepped up to the table. "I can walk. I just prefer not to let people know I can. They pity a poor crippled man in a wheelchair, they constantly underestimate me and I sue that, as I use everything else around me." He smiled. "Now I want an answer to my question."

Shana stayed silent. He asked again. She still stayed silent.

Finally he stepped back from the table, face suffused with rage, and brought his palm down in her face in an open-handed slap that jerked her head hard to the right.

Then the left. Then the right.

She tasted blood in her mouth as her teeth involuntarily closed on the inside of her cheek, as her front teeth cut the inside of her lips, but her heart sang in her mind. He could hurt her body but in the end she could deny him what he wanted, and there was nothing he could do about that. Finally he stepped back from her, breathing heavily, and gestured to two of the men off to the side.

And then with sudden sharpness hands grabbed her arms and half-dragged, half carried her across the floor to Cam's cell, and with a muttered curse she was carelessly shoved into the cell. She never realized she was crying as she crawled over to where Cam was lying unconscious, her eyes fixed on the bruised face, but she was warm and breathing and alive, albeit unconscious, and Shana wrapped her arms around the younger woman, curling her own body around the bruised, abused one of her friend, and pulled the thin blanket around them and she cradled Cam to her. "Cam, Oh God, Cam, I'm so sorry," she whispered, tears streaming down her face, and she buried her face in Cam's hair and cried. She never noticed when the other men left the cell, shutting it behind them; she didn't see Rosa wipe the table down and she didn't even pay attention when Damien left with his minions.

_Jesus, Cam, I'm so sorry…!_

Damien smiled as he leaned back in his wheelchair and watched the two young slaves on the big-screen TV in his study, sipping a fine champagne. "That was entertaining. Though I didn't get what I wanted." A powerful weapon indeed, being able to use one against the other. Such delightful possibilities. Could he make them hurt each other if he threatened to do something worse? He'd have to think about that.

"You're wasting your time with them. Let me kill them both."Rosa leaned intently across his desk.

"Ah -h. Your bloodthirsty nature betrays you, my dear."

But she frowned, dark eyes flashing. "Listen to me. There is more to them than meets the eye. How did the redhead know that the Asian was going into anaphylaxis? And how did she know what anaphylaxis looked like to pentothal unless she'd seen it before?" she leaned forward again. "Putting them in the same cell together is a recipe for disaster, an invitation for them to try escape. These women are dangerous. Get rid of them both."

"Rosa, we are on a tropical island in the middle of a vast blue ocean. Neither of these women will be able to swim to the next island—that was why I chose this particular island for my slave plantation all those years ago. I put them in the same cell together specifically because I want them to escape. I want them to escape and spend a few days roaming the island. I want them to find out that escape from here is hopeless, that I am the master of their world. I want to break their spirits. By allowing them the illusion of freedom, then snatching it away, exposing it as an illusion, and punishing them for what I set them up to do…" he smiled. "Priceless. Here is what I want you to do. I leave tomorrow morning for the London office; there's some business there I need to take care of, and then I'll be back in three days. If they try to escape let them, let then think they have gotten away. You can of course, find them easily. Then bring them to me when I get back in three days' time,I will let them know it's a setup, and take their hope away from them. It will crush their spirits, as it has done for every slave I've ever had here. Then the punishment will break their will and their bodies and I will get the answers I want from them. Do you understand?"

Rosa muttered rebelliously and wouldn't meet his eyes.

"Rosa. Do you understand." It wasn't a question. "Remember that I hold your life in my hands. No one leaves this island unless I allow them to, and it would be very easy for me to trap you here while I notify INTERPOL that you are here. You know exactly how much your life is worth if you return to Italy."

"Yes, I know. I will do as you say." She still sounded sullen, but she had acquiesced.

"Good. See that you follow my orders to the letter." And he went off to pack.


	5. Chapter 48: Fiji

**Chapter 48: Fiji**

Shana woke as she felt Cam stir. "Cam," she whispered, keeping her voice low. "Cam, oh God, say something, please…" Now Shana hoped she had as she leaned in to whisper into Cam's ear. "Cam, come on, please be okay, please…"

Cam stirred…and groaned. "Sh-Shana?" she croaked, her voice hoarse.

"I'm right here, Cam, I'm right here and I'm not going to go anywhere. Ssh. Stay down. How do you feel?"

"Like crap," Cam said weakly, but to Shana's relief the statement was accompanied by a ghost of a smile. It was possibly meant to be reassuring but simply ended up being sad, to Shana—the fact that Cam was trying to put a brave face on what was a horrific situation spoke for her character and her ability to be brave. And if it hadn't been for Shana she wouldn't have had to.

"I'm sorry, Cam," Shana whispered now, blinking back tears. "I'm so sorry. For all of this."

For answer Cam levered herself up to a sitting position, then leaned her head on Shana's shoulder. At first Shana thought it was for human comfort, but then she heard Cam whisper in her ear. "They know sign language so we can't use that. You spoke Gaelic when you were being questioned under the pentothal, but I don't know it well enough to communicate and you don't know Navajo or Iroquois, so we're just going to have to try and keep our voices low."

"How did you get here?" Shana asked, her voice barely above a whisper. "Were you captured in the jungle like I was?"

A slight, very slight, hesitation, then Cam said, "No I wasn't. We questioned Zimurinda about where his people would have taken you and he told us about Sandra and the abandoned hospital in Kinshasa, but by the time we got there you were gone. Zimurinda said you'd likely been sold to slavers, and I knew from experience that the best place for them to unload you would have been at the Amsterdam slave market, so I placed myself in the market to try and find you and together we would get out."

"Oh God." Shana's voice trembled. So Cam had walked into this nightmare just to find her? She felt guilt well up in her. "Cam, I'm so sorry…"

"Try to move your lips as little as possible in case they know how to lip-read," Cam said quickly, interrupting her. "Don't use any names except our own. Can we escape from here?"

Shana helped her lean back against the rocky wall of the cell and took a long, appraising look around. The red eye of the security camera mounted above he barred, gated door caught her eye, and she leaned over to Cam. "Look. I'll bet that camera runs on the same power circuits that control the door. If we can short-circuit that, maybe the door will open?"

"It might," Cam said consideringly after a moment, then turned to Shana. "Are you going to be up for an escape? They drugged you pretty heavily back at the market, and in here. If we escape but can't find help quickly, you'll go into withdrawal and I don't know if I can handle it, Shana. I don't know how bad it will be or how long it will last and I promised Snake Eyes I would take care of you."

"Is…is he okay?" Shana asked her anxiously. "Please, Cam…is he okay?"

"He misses you. A lot." Cam said softly. "He's just been an empty shell of a person walking around. He's barely left your room since we came back, it's like his soul is missing and all that's left is an empty shell that just walks and eats and sleeps, there's little reaction other than that. He really misses you. He wanted to come looking for you but Hawk told him to stay put, so I said I would come look for you."

"Since you have experience with human trafficking. And instead you got captured. Jesus." Shana shook her head. "All right. We need to get out of here before he comes back. Let's check out that security camera."

Cam was lighter, though Shana didn't know by how much; she knew she'd lost a little weight over the last few weeks. She let Cam climb onto her shoulders and then stood carefully' with Cam sitting on her shoulders and her standing up, Cam was just able to reach the security camera. They stayed wary, thinking at any moment that whoever was on the other side of those cameras would see them, come running in, and their escape plans would be ruined, but they were desperate enough not to care.

Cam hit the globe covering the camera lens with one hand, and after two more blows it shattered, the plastic glass no match for her desperate strength. She ignored the jagged edges of plastic, reaching in and ruthlessly ripping the camera out if is housing, exposing the mess of wiring inside. Then she paused. "Shana…I don't know much about electronics and wires."

"I don't know that much either. Just start grabbing handfuls of wire and trying to pick the insulation off the outside. All of that unshielded wire together in that close proximity has to create some kind of reaction. I'm hoping that something will catch fire and trigger some kind of failsafe in the system."

Cam grabbed a sliver of the shattered plexiglass and used it to score the sides of the wires, then started to peel the insulation back. "Shana! It's working!" she hissed excitedly. "I see smoke coming up from the wires!" Her hand disappeared back inside.

And suddenly a moment later the door to their cell slid open. Then shut.

"Cam? Did you do that?"

"What?" Cam was still focusing on the wires inside the wall, and hadn't seen the door open.

"Whatever it was you were just doing, do it again. You triggered the door."

"I did?" Cam stuck her hands back in the wall. "All right, let me know if this…does the trick."

Nothing happened for a while; she was twisting wires this way and that, touching some, crossing others, but nothing seemed to work until, with startling suddenness, she wrapped a yellow-coated wire around one that had sky-blue insulation.

And the cell door slid open.

Shana wanted to cheer but suppressed the urge. Speed and stealth were required now, they had to move quickly and they had to move silently. They edged out of the cell, then crossed the chamber quickly and raced for the barred door that led to the hallway beyond. To their complete and utter surprise, the door opened when they touched it, and they simply pushed it open and sailed on through.

"You would think they would have guards or something," Shana hissed as she and Cam pelted down the hallway, heading for the plain, ordinary wooden door at the other end. Shana grabbed the knob and yanked at it, and the door came open easily; on the other side was what looked like plain wood paneling, but Cam exclaimed in triumph and slapped a smooth panel next to the door, somewhat similar to the push button system installed in public buildings for the handicapped in a wheelchair, and the two women edged cautiously to the open doorway, looking out.

What they saw was a magnificent library. A high trey ceiling arched over walls lined with books, connected by a rolling ladder on a rail that ran around the perimeter of the shelves_. Wow_, Shana mouthed to Cam, impressed with the grandeur, the heavy dark cherry wood of the shelves and the library itself, but there was no time to stop and take in the scenery. They had to get out of here—wherever here was. The last thing Shana remembered was getting the needle in her arm as the lid of the coffin closed over her, and she'd known nothing else until they had woken up in those rock-walled cells.

The door that led out of the library opened out to a flight of stairs, and the stairs only had one direction—up. So they were underground, then. They took the stairs as fast as they could, but they weren't even halfway up, pausing at a small landing halfway up the steps to catch their breaths. Shaan realize at that moment that it must have been a long time since she'd been captured—she could feel her muscles threatening fatigue, feel her thighs trembling from just this far up the steps. "Cam...when we met at the market, how long had I been gone?"

Cam looked at Shana with an unreadable expression and said, "Almost a month."

"A month!?" Shana was floored by that announcement. "Oh my God, a month?" Just how long had they been at sea? Where were they?

She was interrupted by the sound of the door at the top of the stairs opening, and she cursed as she ducked into a small alcove right off that landing. There was a door, and she tried it out of a sudden hope that it might lead somewhere outside.

And it opened, and she and Cam threw themselves through the door, closing it behind them quickly and slipping the lock home with a quiet click. Seconds later, they heard voices go by the door, the owners of those voices not even checking to see if the alcove door was open before walking on past. "They'll come back. We can't stay," Cam hissed, and the two women turned to see what this room was that they were in, and whether it would offer any opportunities.

"A laundry!" Shana burst out as she saw the baskets of clothing items all over the room. Some clean and folded, some obviously dirty, but she'd never felt so relieved as she went to a basket and pulled a plain t-shirt out, then fished out another shirt and handed it to Cam. Pants were a little harder; but finally the found two pairs that were only just a little too big, and that was easily solved by rolling the cuffs of the pants up. _Oh my God I never realized just how human clothes could make you feel!_ After so many weeks—a month!—of nudity, she was finally decently covered, even if she didn't have underwear. It was still something.

And behind some sheets hanging up they found a door. It had a simple deadbolt lock on it, and they turned the lock—and found themselves blinking out at bright yellow sunlight.

The door led out to a small grassy yard, and the purpose was evident when they saw clotheslines stretched between poles, with sheets and clothing hanging out in the breeze. A quick peek around the yard produced no sign of anyone watching, and they made a dash across the green lawn to a thick stand of trees on the other side. The sun was bright but the trees shaded them, and they slipped away from the house, which they could now clearly see had been built at the top of what looked like an enormous hill. The door they had come out of opened out of the cliff face, and the small lawn they'd crossed was no bigger than about twenty square feet.

They worked their way down off the hill, cutting a switchback back-and-forth pattern across the face. Cam took the lead here, and Shana blindly followed; while she knew some survival tactics (she had taken SERE-C courses, after all) she quickly acknowledged that Cam was the expert here as Cam blazed a trail back and forth across the face of the hill, crossing their own trail multiple times to try and confuse any searchers who might be looking for them with dogs. By the time they reached the bottom of the hill, Shana could see glimpses of what looked like—water? between two tree trunks.

And then they broke out of the treeline and saw pristine white beach stretched out in front of them. At any other time she would have thought it beautiful, much like the long stretch of sandy beach that she and Snake Eyes loved at their New Zealand getaway, but right now it was cause for despair. "No," she whispered, staring at the beach and the turquoise water in front of the, stretching out to the horizon. "No, there…there has to be a road, and other people, it can't…It can't be a private island!"

"Let's have a look around. Maybe this is just a peninsula, or maybe there will be another island nearby we can swim to."

But by the time the sun touched the horizon even Cam's optimism had started to wane. "We're trapped," she said finally, grimly, sitting down on the ground under a tree as they watched the sun slowly sink into the sea. Behind another island they could see maybe a mile across the water. "It's a private island and we'll have to go on the supposition that everyone on here is in the employ of the son of a bitch who brought us here. We can't afford to go looking for any kind of help because they're likely to try and turn us in. I wonder if we can build some kind of raft or something and reach that other island, Shana." She turned to Shana…and froze. "Shana…Shana, stay with me!"

Shana's hands were shaking so bad she couldn't even keep them still when she curled her hand into a fist. "I…it's the withdrawal, Cam, I can't help it, oh God, I'm so sorry… go on and leave me here. You can make it to that other island, but I'm t-t-to dependent on the drugs…" tears spilled out of her eyes.

"I am not leaving you here. Come on. I think I saw a cave not too far back, this island was once an active volcano and this is actually the tip of a mountain. That chamber that we were in wasn't all artificial, I think that was at one point a small lava chamber. If it was there will be other lava tubes in the bedrock of the mountain and one of them is bound to be big enough for us to hide in."

Her prediction proved true as they backtracked long the beach, her attention now on supporting Shana and keeping her upright. She'd been worried this was going to happen, that Shana would go into withdrawal while they escaped, but she'd hoped that they would be able to find help before this happened. She hadn't once thought this could be a private island, and that freedom was only a mile away—the other island, off to the west. But they had no hope of reaching it, not with Shana in the condition she was in now.

Her own strength was flagging and she was out of breath and gasping by the time she saw the hole in the cliff face that she'd seen on their way here. It was screened by some low-growing brush, and very, very close to the waterline; at high tide the water would probably cover the entrance to the cave. It might be a problem later, if tide stayed high enough, but for now it would be ideal.

She ducked under the rocky outcropping that overhung the front of the cave, and found a small chamber, just barely large enough to accommodate both of them. Water sloshed around the floor of the cave, but the sloping floor led to a higher side that did stay dry, as evidenced by the high-water mark. Cam gently unwrapped Shana's arm from around her neck, stretched her out flat and tried to make her comfortable, then sat down herself with a sigh.

_I wish I knew where we are. I wish I'd paid more attention in school. Heck, I wish I'd _finished _school. A GED just isn't the same. Somewhere in the tropics, certainly—nowhere else would have water that blue. I wish I could enjoy it, but we have to focus on surviving first._ She looked down at Shana, who was lying on her side curled up in a fetal position, and touched the redhead's forehead. Shana's skin was hot, but sweaty; clammy. _She's starting to run a low-grade fever. I'll have to keep an eye out on it tonight. But in the meantime…_She curled up close to Shana, touching her. _If she moves she'll wake me. But in the meantime I need to get some sleep. It's going to be a long night._


	6. Chapter 49: Fiji

**Chapter 49: Fiji**

By the time the sky lightened through the hole in the roof of the cave, Cam was beyond caring.

_Goddess, how much of this stuff did they give her?_ She'd taken Shana's shirt off, soaked it in the ocean water that lapped up around the entrance to their seaside cave, and put it back on to try and keep her body temperature and her fever down. She'd considered actually lowering Shana into the water—it would have been easier, but the problem was that Shana was convulsing so much, legs kicking, that she wasn't sure she could hold onto her friend. And if she accidentally dropped Shana into the water, the redhead might drown before she got her back out; Shana didn't seem to have control over her body at the moment. Cam had reluctantly taken Shana's pants off; it was easier to clean her up if she was wearing the minimum of clothing. She was hungry, but she couldn't spare any time to go and look for something to eat; if she left Shana alone, even for a minute, something could happen.

And she had promised Snake Eyes that she would protect and care for Shana.

Fortunately for both of them, they hadn't had far to go for fresh water. In the back of this natural lava cave there was a tiny spring welling up from the rock. Cam had tasted it, carefully, to make sure it wasn't sulfuric or otherwise poisonous, but to her giddy relief she'd discovered it to be fresh. It did taste odd, from minerals in the water that she wasn't familiar with, but fortunately after drinking her fill from the tiny rock basin and waiting an hour she hadn't felt any ill effects, and she'd taken the water to Shana to keep her friend hydrated.

She gently tilted Shana's head now and tipped some more water into her mouth. Shana's eyes were glazed and unseeing, she whimpered and kicked and twisted, and it was painful to watch as she suffered through the pain of withdrawal and begged Cam hoarsely for more of the drugs. Cam wished, with all her heart, that when they'd left she had thought to check the underground chamber for the drugs they were giving Shana—it would have been easier just to give her maintenance doses of the drugs while they tried to figure out how to get off the island.

_There's that big dead tree log back down the beach a ways. We can push that log out into the water and hang onto it while we paddle out to that other island. Once we get there, if it's inhabited we can beg for help, just looking at us you can see something bad happened. if it's uninhabited we'll at least be able to survive there until they come and get us, or maybe there could be another island farther away, on the other side of that one. Islands usually come in chains, and especially tropical islands; they're formed by undersea mountain chains. _

_How long have we been on this island? Several days? I have no idea how long we were out. But it's two weeks. Two weeks for my tracer to stop moving and they will come and get us. I'm going to try to get us out if I can but if push comes to shove all we really have to do is sit tight for two weeks. We have fresh water here, and once Shana's over the worst of the withdrawal I can forage for food. Without knowing where we are I don't have any inkling of what kind of berries and nuts and roots are available but I can certainly make a bow and arrow and bring down some sea birds. May not be much but it's something. And I can also go fishing—I'll bet fish get trapped in these rock pools all the time and all I need is a spear. Those are easy._

She heard the sound of Shana vomiting again behind her and she hurried to her friend, heart aching as she cupped handfuls of seawater and splashed it up on the rocky ledge on which they lay, trying to clean it so Shana wouldn't be lying in her own vomit and waste. Looks _like the tide is coming in again. I'll have to get her higher. _Cam grabbed Shana's armpits and hauled her upwards, pulling her clear of the high-water mark before laying her down again and trying to make her comfortable.

"Cam…." The whisper was so faint Cam almost didn't hear her over the sound of the lapping waves and water; but when she did she quickly dropped to her knees by Shana's side. It was the first coherent word she'd heard from the redhead in the two days they'd been here.

"So…sorry…" each word was a huge effort, and she could see Sana was hanging onto lucidity with all her will, trying not to give into the delirium that had consumed her till this point.

"Ssh. Don't try to talk. It'll be okay." She tried to make her voice sound convincing. Two weeks. They just had to survive out here and evade pursuers for two weeks. And the Joes would come get them, and they would go home, and she would see Charlie again and Shana would see Snake Eyes. She just had to be strong. Two weeks. And they were already at least three days into that two weeks.

"S-s-sorry…" Shana was slipping back into delirium, and Cam sighed as she gently patted Shana's shoulders.

"It'll be okay, Shana. Go ahead." Shana moaned as she lost her fight with the drug-induced delirium, but fortunately she only spent a few minutes thrashing until she suddenly collapsed into sleep. And it was real sleep, not the drugged, tormented sleep she'd been in for most of the last two days. Maybe they were finally working their way out of her body; Cam fervently hoped so.

Cam tried to stand—and then had to sit back down again, quickly, as she was hit with a rush of light-headedness. _I have to find something to eat. Have to. And Shana's going to be ravenous when she wakes up. She's lost so much muscle and body fat…Snake Eyes could probably pick her up with no effort at all right now._ She got to her feet a little more slowly this time, and didn't get dizzy.

With Shana asleep now, she felt a little better about leaving her. _I'm not going to go far, just a short way around the cave. I want to try and find some greens that would be edible, and maybe—since it's low tide—I can try to find some fish. Shana could use some protein right about now._

She got down into the water, peeked cautiously under the outcropping. Nothing. No one. She started to wade out…and then thought better of it and instead performed a shallow surface dive to get underwater. She swam far enough out that she wouldn't be seen from the beach, then turned and approached the beach at an angle, finally climbing out of the water onto a rocky outcropping that projected outward some distance to the west of where she'd left Shana in their hiding place.

A search of the rocky pools produced two fish; not really big, but Goddess, anything was better than nothing! Every tiny bite meant they might make it, every little bit meant they could survive a little longer. She found a bush with some strange-looking berries on it, strange and unfamiliar-looking, but when she saw that the shorebirds seemed to snack on them with relish, she grabbed one off the bush and tasted it herself. Her experience told her that if it was bitter it was probably poisonous, but when she popped it in her mouth gingerly she found it sweet and juicy, and she eagerly grabbed a handful, stuffing them in her mouth; then she stuffed her pockets with as many as she could fit. The sweetness meant it probably had some simple fruit sugars in it, and those sugars would help stabilize Shana after her ordeal.

She was just looking around for something that she could use to put more of the berries in when she heard a twig crack behind her.

There was a woman and a man standing there behind her.

Cam froze, appalled. There was nothing she could do. She couldn't possibly run, not burdened with the fish and the berries; couldn't risk leaving them behind either because she and Cam needed the food. She laid the fish on the grass carefully and bounded on the balls of her feet, lightly; if running was impossible, she'd do her damndest to fight. And she would not tell them where Shana was!

But they didn't seem to be interested in fighting, or pursuing her. They stared at her warily as she eyed them, and then the woman pointed to her. When she spoke, her English, though heavily accented with a language Cam couldn't name, was recognizable.

"They…looking for you."

She nodded warily, unwilling to speak.

"They do bad things to you."

Another nod.

"Your friend...Master like her very much. Want her back."

"I'm not going back." The anger in her voice shocked even her.

The woman shook her head, "You go away. Not come here. Camera on this side of island. Stay south, west. No camera there."

Stunned, Cam stared at her. "Thank…thank you."

The woman smiled at her, teeth flashing in a dark face, then stepped forward and laid something on the ground between them. Then, without looking at Cam again, she turned around, took her man's arm, and headed back to the small cottage Cam could now see between a couple of trees.

Her attention returned to the ground, to the object the woman had placed there, and her heart twisted in her chest. An ordinary table knife. Just a small bit of slightly-rusted metal. Nothing much.

But that bit of slightly-rusted metal could be sharpened to an edge, and an edged weapon meant a lot of things. She could cut herself a bow and a set of arrows, could sharpen the ends of the arrows into points. With arrows she could bring down sea birds, for warm red meat that would give them the strength to keep going. The gift of that knife was priceless.

She snatched up the knife and fled, thanking the Goddess for the gift, and for the even more priceless knowledge that the only cameras were on the east and north side of the island, and the south and west, which included the bit of rocky coastline where she and Shana were currently hiding, was safe. She would take a look at the coastline on her way back, but if it was as rocky as it seemed, boats might not be able to come in too close to the shore and it would give herself and Shana an extra measure of protection.

She couldn't make the swim with the two fish and her pockets full of berries, but knowing that security cameras didn't cover those areas of the island meant she might not have to be as careful. The sharp slippery rocks cut her feet as she scrambled over them, but the waves washing over them washed that trace, as well as her scent, away, and she scrambled under the outcropping with barely a few minutes to spare before the incoming tide put the entrance underwater.

The inside of the cave had had a number of dry twigs, carried in here by the tide, tossed up by the waves, and then left as the water receded. She gathered a number of these now, piling them neatly on the dry ledge, then set about sharpening the table knife on the edge of the stone that made up the floor and walls of the cave.

Nearly an hour later, Shana stirred and woke, and Cam managed to sound cheerful as she went to the redhead. "Shana. Hey. It's me, Cam" she said, when the glazed, blurred eyes tried to focus on her. Although she still seemed muddled from the drugs, there was some awareness in her eyes as she looked at Cam, and Cam got the sense that she was trying very hard to come back from the drugged haze she'd been in the last few days.

Well, some food would help, and Cam had managed to build a small fire, then bank it down to embers in order to try and smoke the fish. The lava tunnels that provided fresh air into the cave allowed smoke from the tiny smoky fire to escape and as long as she kept the fire low, she was fairly certain no one would see the light from the flames. "Here. You'll probably feel a little more human once you have some food in you." Shana blinked as Cam handed her a fillet from the fish, smoked tender and served on a large flat leaf that Cam had taken from off a bush on the way back, but bit into it without another word.

There wasn't nearly enough to fill both of them, but the little bit of food did wonders for Cam's morale, and even Shana looked a little better when she finished her fish. The berries were wolfed down with equal relish, and when Shana finally went to sleep it was a peaceful, quiet sleep instead of the drug-tortured semi-consciousness that had plagued Shana for the last two days. When Cam finally banked the fire and stretched out beside Shana to get some sleep for herself, she was actually starting to feel optimistic about their chances of making it. Ten days. Just ten more days.

She went to sleep with a smile on her face.

"What do you mean, you can't find them? It's an island, for Christ's sake, there's nowhere they could go! They have to still be in there somewhere!"

Hans shrugged apologetically. "I have sent all our hands out to look for them. None of them have had any luck."

On the 40-inch TV screen, Damien Kennedy frowned at the staff assembled in the field of view of the wide-angle webcam. Of the sixteen men standing there, ten of them were his own people, handpicked by him to staff his island. These ten men performed functions around his mansion; four of them, with electrical engineering degrees, keeping the solar power generating station running, keeping power running to his mansion, keeping the cable and internet and wireless communications and the electric supplied to the torture chamber and prisoners' cells downstairs. The other six performed maintenance on his private helicopter when it was parked on the mansion's helipad, ran the fueling operations for it and the backup generator, fueling operations for his private yacht. When Kennedy was not on the island none of those modes of transportation—the yacht, the helicopter, were available on the island. Not that they would want to go anywhere; those ten men, plus Rosa, were disinclined to go anywhere since they were all wanted for various crimes in their native countries. Hans for pedophilia, Rosa for being a Mafia torturer, various other men, mostly ex-military convicted of rape or murder in their native countries, and crooked cops.

The others, though, were native Fiji islanders, who had already been living on this island when he had bought it,. These were simpler farming folk who performed support work; they, and their wives did laundry and tended the gardens and livestock that provided fresh food and vegetables for his table when he was in residence. He kept chickens and sheep and a couple of cows, plus one bull, on one acre of the 27 acres that this island covered; while only roughly half of the island was habitable, he made sure that he used every inch of the available land to ensure that the people he kept here were comfortable and happy.

And he made sure he kept a piece of female meat around to keep them happy. And right now, his slave was not only missing but their meat was missing too; and although he was irritated at the fact that they couldn't find the two women, he also had to admit he couldn't possibly place the blame on their lack of motivation. They wanted the hole back as much as he wanted the Testarossa back. The only people for whom he couldn't vouch for their willingness to find the two slaves were the natives, although he doubted they were smart enough to figure out what he wanted slaves for and what he did with them.

He raised his voice so that every person in the room would hear him. "I want those women found. Do you understand me? Found. I will be at the island tomorrow at noon and I expect to see them waiting for me, If I find later that one of you has seen them but has not reported it, that person is dead."

In the back row, the second to last man standing there forced himself not to shudder as he prayed to the gods to keep the woman safe. He'd known who she was the minute he'd seen her stuffing her mouth with berries; and he'd thought briefly about alerting the other men, but Ana had stepped forward and started talking to her, and he saw the hunted, wary, exhausted look in this woman's eyes—as well as the bruises on her face, the raw sores on her arms, and the desperation in every line of her body. And…he couldn't.

He wasn't one of those who were privileged to serve up in the mansion, and from what he heard from those who did, he knew he didn't want to. The stories he heard were terrible; women kept prisoner in the basement, tortured, raped—and every person on the island had seen the island's owner, Mister Kennedy, take battered, bleeding, half-dead women and throw them over the edge of the fishing platform on the north side of the island so the sharks could tear them apart. The thought of this man doing that to his Ana warred with his desire to try and keep the two strange women safe. While he wanted to admit that he had seen at least one of the women, knowing that this man would probably kill Ana because she left a table knife for her kept his mouth shut, and he hoped and prayed that they would escape. Because if the women were caught again, and they told Kennedy that Ana had helped them…

He hoped Kennedy would kill him and Ana both.


	7. Chapter 50: Fiji

**Chapter 50: Fiji**

Nine days.

Cam repeated that to herself as she climbed over slippery rocks, checking for fish in the tidal pools. Nine days until they were rescued. They would just have to survive nine more days.

The knife had, indeed, been priceless. With it, she'd been able to sharpen the points of sticks into arrows, cut herself a bow, and at just that moment Shana was back in their seaside cave pulling feathers from the two fat ducks Cam had managed to shoot down. The meat would do a lot toward their calorie count for the day, and while she couldn't risk going back to those berry bushes, where there was one there could be more elsewhere on the island and she would just have to look.

Shana was still groggy and out of it, and while she was spending more and more time sleeping and less time in the drugged delirium, the fact of the matter was that she was still delirious part of the time, delirious and begging for the drugs that had put her in this state, and Cam couldn't leave her while she was like that. Several times she'd heard the sound of human voices filtering down to them from the holes in the cave roof and had to quickly grab Shana and put her hand over her friend's mouth until she was sure that the owners of those voices had gone past.

She was slowly starting to develop a mental map of the island as she rambled over and around it. It was quite large for a private island, she guessed about twenty acres or so. The main residence, where the house was, was at the very top of the mountain peak that made up the island, with a basement (the library) and a sub basement (the cells) sunk deeply into and carved out of the rock of the mountain itself. It was roughly teardrop shaped, and there was some sort of fishing platform at the northern tip of the island, which just affirmed Cam's belief that the woman who had given them the knife had been telling the truth about the cameras. And it made sense that the east side of the island would have cameras too; that was where the huge stretch of sandy beach was.

The water was fairly shallow almost all the way around the island except around the fishing platform at the north face; the white sandy bottom was easily visible in the crystalline water, which was part of the reason why Cam thought they were pretty close to some tourist resorts. She'd seen several large boats, more like pleasure yachts, out on the water several miles away from the island; too far to hail, but for some reason the sight of them was oddly comforting; it was a sign that life went on, outside of their own troubles, and managed to put some perspective and keep her from sinking too deeply into despair.

She still wanted to try their luck with the log; as Shana got better incrementally each day, she could see how their escape plan might work. The other island out there seemed to be closer to the deep water than this one, and deeper water meant the tourists' water sports would come out farther. All they had to do was be able to reach that other island, and from there they could maybe flag one of those pleasure yachts and go home.

But even if they didn't manage to flag one of those boats they could still look forward to rescue in nine days. They just had to survive for nine days.

She carefully skirted a pool that she knew held sea urchins and headed for the rocky outcropping that hid the mouth of their little cave. Sea urchin spines were poisonous, even if the animal itself was good eating; she didn't dare risk incapacitation, not with Shana at less than a hundred percent and depending on her for food, so she hadn't even tried to catch one of those, although she had marked them as a possibility. She just wanted to explore other options first.

She reached the end of the rocky part of the shore and was about to step out onto the sandy beach when she heard voices. Instantly cautious, she ducked behind a rocky outcropping and watched as a large white yacht pulled up at a small pier at the very end of the sandy spit. Her eyes hardened as she saw Damien Kennedy step out of it and onto the dock, and her fingers itched for her bow; she had arrows, she had a working bow (although she couldn't shoot as far because she'd rigged a bowstring from elastic cannibalized from the elastic waistband of the pants she and Shana had been wearing. Braided and doubled, it made a tolerable bowstring, good for short distance shots; this shot was short distance, and it could be easy—she could easily hit him at this range even with the crude weapons she held.

The problem was that even if she hit the SOB there was no guarantee that she would kill him. And that was what scared her. If she wounded him but didn't kill him, her death, and Shana's, was certain. No, better not to even risk it. His people were obviously looking for her and Shana, best to not leave any trace of their presence. Let him think they had somehow found a way off the island, let him go chasing that possibility while they hid in this cave under his house.

But if he was back, then the search of the island was going to intensify, and it wouldn't really be safe to ramble around it in broad daylight. She was going to have to limit her foraging sessions for dawn or twilight and night, and stick close to their cave during the day. Not that that was a hardship, her father had taught her long ago how to navigate in darkness, how to feel with her fingertips. She was confident she could manage.

She watched Kennedy stroll down the dock. Stroll, not wheel himself in his wheelchair. She wondered if he even really needed the wheelchair they had first seen him in, or if he just used it as a way to manipulate people. He obviously had a lot of money—it took a lot of money to buy your own private island and staff it and keep it running, and added to that the fact that he had paid a quarter of a million US Dollars to buy both her and Shana from the market just fed into that perception, along with the mansion and this private yacht. She didn't put it past him to have used people's perceptions of his disability to acquire the hefty fortune that having his own private island demanded. Where she hated pity and despised the way people looked at her once they knew about her past and her scars, he relished it, used it. And she despised him for it.

His voice carried on the slight breeze down the beach as Hans approached. From this distance she could see his stooped, slight figure, his thin face and dead-black hair, and even from this distance he gave her 'the creeps'. "Hans. Have you found them yet?"

"No, Mister Damien. We have had men looking everywhere but we haven't found them yet."

The frustrated tone carried downwind, making Cam smile in vicious satisfaction. "This island is twenty seven acres surrounded by water. There is no way on or off since I take my helicopter and my yacht off the island when I leave. None of my employees have ever managed to leave unless I gave permission. How did two naked slaves manage to evade my best hired people?" He blew out his breath. "Do you have any idea why you haven't found them yet?"

"One of the men thinks they may have tried to swim for the other island over there," and Hans indicated the island Cam, had been eyeing. "He says they could have pushed a log into the water and then paddled with hands and sticks over there."

"They are slaves, Hans! They aren't that smart!" Kennedy said roughly, and Cam gritted her teeth in anger. She and Shana would show them. They would escape. And as Kennedy walked off the dock and through a door in the cliff face, where the other side presumably had a lift that would take him up into the main part of his house, Cam's lips curled in a small smile.

He'd left the boat.

"Shana. Shana, come on, I think I found out ticket off here." She had to shake Shana firmly to wake the redhead up, but she was positive that Shana would be able to handle this. All they had to do was get down the beach to the yacht, scoot aboard, and start the boat. They would steal Kennedy's own yacht to escape—it would be fitting justice.

"What…" Shana was dazed and dizzy. Cam understood, and sympathized; at this stage of recovery Shana was exhausted from the fight her body had just gone through and had little energy left for anything. However, the need to escape was too strong to ignore.

"Shana, it's Cam. Come on, wake up. Please." She had to fight to keep the pleading note out of her voice. "We gotta go, Shana, come on!"

"What…Cam…leaving?" Shana couldn't even form a complete sentence, but Cam figured out what she was saying.

"Yeah, we're leaving. It's not safe for us here anymore, Shana. Kennedy left the island for a few days but now he's back and he's pissed. He's going to turn the island upside down to find us and he's not going to stop until he does. But he parked his boat at the end of the pier on the beach and I figure we can probably steal it." She didn't have the foggiest idea how to drive one, but she was positive she'd figure it out. And after all, it wasn't like she was entering a boat show or anything; they just had to get to the next inhabited island.

And they'd be free.

The tide was coming in; they just barely fit under the rocky overhang over the water, and Cam half-supported, half-carried Shana down the beach. There was a spot there where the sand sloped upward to meet the dock, and she used that as a 'ramp' to get up on the dock after a quick glance at the door in the rock, making sure it was closed and no one would come out of it at the last moment. Then she made a mad dash for the end of the pier, hoping against hope that their cameras wouldn't spot her until she and Shana were on board—because she KNEW there were cameras on the boat, the dock, the pier—how could there not be? A man who would look at two women as slaves, as toys, as things, would certainly have cameras trained in the possessions that truly mattered to him; his luxury yacht, his private helicopter, his cars (if he had any.)

She gritted her teeth as Shana's legs buckled, dumping her against the railing of the boat as Cam tried to scramble onto the deck with Shana almost a dead-weight behind her. 'Stay with me, Shana, please, stay with me," she whispered urgently. "Just a little longer, Shana, please, just until we're away from the island!"

Shana must have heard her on some level, because she fuzzily tried to get her knees under her. With a superhuman effort and a strength of will Cam didn't know she had, she managed to get both of them off the deck and down into the wheelhouse. "All right. We're out of sight. How do I drive this thing?" she stared at the wheel in frustration. "Keys. There have to be keys somewhere. Come on, where would someone put the keys?" She pushed aside navigation charts, maps, assorted paperwork on the table in the middle of the wheelhouse and finally found the keys on a shiny keyring under the a map fo what looked like the island. "All right!" She crowed triumphantly as she palmed them, and turned to stick the key in the ignition.

And froze.

There was a man behind her, standing halfway up the shallow steps that led from the wheelhouse to the decks below. And he had Shana in a headlock, with a gun barrel pressed to her temple.

"No!" The anguished cry slipped from her as she realized that Shana was completely out. Unconscious. Unable to put up a fight, or help herself. "Shana, wake up, please, wake up!" she screamed helplessly. "Shana!"

"She's out of it. She's not going to answer you." The man said; unnecessarily, because Cam knew it was hopeless as tears slid down her cheeks. They were so close—so damn close, if she could just reach the bastard she could knock him out or kill him, and they would be on their way home—but even as she thought that, her eyes measuring the distance between herself and the gunman, she knew there was no way she would reach him before he pulled the trigger, and her shoulders slumped in defeat as she put the keys down on the wheelhouse table.

"Pick up the redhead bitch," The man gestured with the gun, and Cam obeyed even as tears flowed faster. She'd failed; failed Shana, failed Snake Eyes, failed herself and Charlie, and it stung. Despair and disappointment cut through her like a knife as she grabbed Shana's arm, slung it over her shoulder and stepped out of the wheelhouse. The gunman was barely two steps behind her as she walked out onto the deck, then down off the deck to the dock. Shana was a dead weight, and she was progressing slowly, so it wasn't a surprise to her when the door at the end of the dock in the rock wall opened and she saw Damien Kennedy step through and stand there, glaring in the bright sunlight.

"How did you evade my men for three days?' He hissed at her, his eyes alight with furious anger, the calculating anger of an angry cobra. "How? What are you, that you could evade us and manage to hide my property from me for three days?" He raised a hand, snapped his fingers; the door behind him opened again, and this time Hans and Rosa came out with a gurney between them…and Rosa held a needle. Cam cried out in inarticulate protest as they grabbed Shana from her, hauling her onto the gurney and strapping her down roughly, then Rosa slammed the tip of the needle into Shana's arm and injected her with the drugs. Moments later, the tormented grimace on Shana's face smoothed into a look of peace as she slipped into a drugged daze; she made no movement, no protest, as Rosa and Hans tightened the straps holding her down and then took the gurney back through the door, leaving Cam alone to face Kennedy.

"I cannot punish her," Kennedy said, his voice trembling with rage. "But I can punish you." He grabbed her arm roughly with one hand, grabbed a fistful of cloth from the front of the shirt she wore, and stripped it from her. She kept her spine straight, face impassive, refusing to show shame or humiliation at her sudden nudity.

"Bitch," Kennedy said, her impassivity apparently enraging him even more. "Bring her," he snapped to the man who had caught Cam and Shana on the boat, and turned and led the way through the door in the wall.

Inside, Cam could see Shana already strapped down to the steel medical table in the corner, drugged and unconscious. She was given no time to reflect, however; the man dragged her over to where two tall posts stood upright on the concrete of the floor maybe about four feet from the wall farthest from the cells she and Shana had escaped from. Kennedy held a gun on her as the guard went about tying her wrists tightly, one wrist to each pole, with her back to the room and her face to the wall; once she was bound securely and unable to escape, Kennedy pulled up a chair and sat down with his back to the wall, looking into her face. Cam tensed as she heard the sound of leather thongs whistling through the air.

"You will whip her until she passes out," he told the man, then addressed Cam with a cold, cruel smile. "Feel free to scream as loud as you like. I will enjoy every minute of it." He nodded to the man standing behind Cam. "Begin."

The first stroke against her bare back made her go rigid in her bonds, breath hissing between her teeth. Goddess, but it had been so long since the last time she felt this pain, she'd forgotten exactly how much it hurt. She braced herself, hands gripping the ropes that bound her to the poles, and leaned back, trying to remember all the lessons she'd taught herself when she was a captive of her aunt and uncle. _Breathe. Accept it. Don't fight it. Accept it. Breathe._

The mantra helped her withstand the pain for a while, but not even she was proof against it for long. Eventually it grew too much, and she started to whimper, then to cry, then to screaming as the pain grew beyond her ability to bear. Exhaustion took over, and she could no longer even stand; she sagged limply in her bonds, her body rocking with each blow, as the whip rose and descended, again and again and again. The scarred skin on her back broke, bled; she felt the blood trickling, and in the few moments as the guard rested his arm she wondered dazedly what she would look like when they were done.

She tried to keep in mind her pain acceptance mantra, but soon she couldn't even hold onto that. _Nine days_, was her next thought, but the agony, overwhelming as the whip cut the scarred skin of her back, made it unlikely that she would last nine days. Not like this. Her only hope, as darkness finally claimed her, took her away from the wreck of her body and the white-hot pain in her back, was that she hoped they would bury her somewhere on the island. Or even if they just threw her body in the ocean; the chip implanted next to her scalp would still lead the Joes here, and Shana would still get out. It was this last hope that made her smile as blackness wrapped velvety wings around her conscious and took her away from the agony.

Kennedy stood as the body of the scarred slave slumped in its bonds, its own weight yanking down against the ropes on its wrists. He'd enjoyed watching her pain, enjoyed watching her fight the pain until she couldn't keep her cries back anymore, until her will finally broke and she screamed in agony.

He crossed the room now to where his slave, the Testarossa, lay strapped to the table with her legs apart. The hole had apparently been taking care of her; she was clean and dressed in castoff clothes from the laundry, and had eaten something—berries, likely—given the stains on her lips and fingers. "Take those clothes off her," he ordered brusquely. Then leave them here for tonight. I'll attend to them tomorrow."


	8. Chapter 51: Fiji

**Chapter 51: Fiji**

She woke slowly.

For the first time in what felt like a while, she wasn't muzzy-headed or dizzy and the sharp pang of drug cravings was gone. A part of her recognized that the clear-headedness was only an illusion, that in fact she was only feeling this way because of the drugs, but at the moment she couldn't bring herself to care. She was strapped down, unable to move, and her legs were strapped down to stirrups, thighs spread so wide her hips ached with the strain.

Then all thought of herself vanished as she turned her head and saw the horrific scene at the far end of the room. "Cam!" she croaked in anguish as tears filled her eyes.

Cam hung limp on the end of the ropes that confined her wrists. Her body was limp, head lolling on her neck. Her heavy dark hair, almost grown out after the impromptu haircut she'd experienced that summer, was matted with dried blood and clung to the scabbed cuts on her back. Her legs were crumpled under her, not taking any of her weight, and in fact just contributing to the strain on her wrists; her hands were curled into blue claws, circulation cut off by the presence of the ropes tied too tightly around her wrists.

_No, oh dear God, no!_ Shana cursed in hot, helpless anger as she saw her friend, her fellow soldier, her subordinate officer. They had been caught, she remembered that much; remembered kind of half-waking as she felt the borrowed clothes being taken off her, but had lost her grip on consciousness after that_. No, oh God, Cam, I'm so sorry…you should have gone, run, left me! I was so dependent on the drugs that you lost your chance because of me!_

"C-C-Cam?' She stammered quietly, "Cam, can you hear me?"

"Sh-Shana?" and Shana wanted to cry, the voice sounded so lost and helpless and pain-wracked. "Shana…oh Goddess, I hurt, I hurt so much…" she was crying, hard sobs shaking her body, and the heaving sobs caused some of the blood crusted over the cuts to break open and bleed afresh.

"It's okay, Cam. It's okay, I'm here." Yes, she was here, lying down on a table, unhurt, while Cam was crying with shock and pain from a beyond-brutal whipping. Shana couldn't even imagine how much pain Cam must be feeling at that moment.

"Ah. You're awake." Shana stiffened as she turned toward the door. Rosa walked in, a slinky supermodel's walk that Shana had seen on Courtney many times. The problem was that Courtney could make that walk look sexy—which she did whenever Wayne walked by. But on Rosa, this walk and the way she moved looked more like a stealthy predator eyeing up a potential meal, and Shana's instinct screamed at her to keep the woman away from Cam!

But there wasn't really anything she could do.

Rosa smiled as she reached for a coiled hose in one corner of the room, turning the attached spigot. "I do so hate it when my human canvases are ruined. Let me wash some of that blood off you so I can see what that boorish _bastardo_ did to my plaything."

The hose was pressurized, and Cam couldn't hold back a scream of pain as she was pummeled mercilessly with the sharp spray. Under its relentless pressure she writhed as the hard stream of water washed the blood caked in the ends of her hair, stripped the scabs from her torn, bleeding flesh, and exposed the bleeding cuts again.

But with the blood washed off, it looked a little less worse than it had when Shana first saw it. She counted maybe ten cuts interspersed with bruises, not particularly deep, not that that was any consolation. You didn't have to make a person bleed to cause incredible pain.

"Hmm. Not as bad as I thought." Rosa smiled approvingly as she walked up and ran a finger along one edge of a cut. Cam shivered in response, getting her legs under her and shying as far away from the touch as possible—which wasn't far, as she was still tied. "You'll be fine; they don't need to be stitched, more's the pity. I would have so liked poking holes in your skin." She grinned. "Maybe I will. Maybe I'll sew the skin of your hands to the scar tissue on your thighs. Oh, look at the look on your face. Priceless. No, don't worry, I won't be doing that to you. There are so many other things I can try." Her smiled turned vicious. "I'd like to know how deep this scar tissue goes, for one."

"Get your hands off her!" Shana cried, enraged. "Don't you dare touch her!"

"Or what?" Rosa laughed, a hard-edged, braying laugh that jangled on the nerves. "What will you do to me? You're a slave, and I don't know why you even bothered trying to escape because it's not going to do you any good at all. You couldn't get off this island even with you and your friend working together." She smiled. "But I'll tell you what. I'll treat her wounds if you tell me how you both managed to escape our search parties for so long. We let you escape, you know," she said, and at that revelation Shana felt the blood drain from her face. "Master Kennedy said we should let you escape and enjoy freedom for a day, then we should come and pick you up. We tried to follow his instructions but you were completely gone and we couldn't find a single trace of you."

Cam's smile was a ghastly rictus as she grinned at Rosa. "You couldn't find us," she taunted. "All your intelligence and your men and you couldn't find us."

Rosa's expression turned ugly. "No, we couldn't find you," she said angrily. "So tell me how you did it."

Cam smiled again. "Why? I'm not like you. I don't need to trot my deeds out for someone to praise and pet. The fact that we eluded you for three days means we must have done something right, and I'll just enjoy that knowledge in private."

Rosa stared at her for a moment, face darkening. With a muttered curse, she grabbed a length of rope, wrapping it around Cam's left ankle and then pulling it out until she could tether it to an eyebolt at the bottom of the post. Then she did the same with Cam's other leg, and then wrapped more rope around Cam's waist until she could no longer move. Then she went to one of the drawers, taking out a thin-bladed scalpel and a stack of petri dishes.

What followed was something Shana would never forget. Not even in her worst nightmares had she ever dreamed anyone could do this to another human being. Rosa started with a couple of shallow slices into the regular skin on the back of Cam's left thigh, cutting what looked like a long rectangle, outlined in red blood. Cam was gritting her teeth, trying not to scream, but when Rosa grabbed one corner of the 'rectangle' in a pair of forceps and eased the knife blade under the first layer of Cam's skin, then started pulling it off, inch by excruciating inch, Cam screamed in horrific agony, her body convulsing as she tried to escape the woman who was skinning her leg.

Shana retched helplessly. The blood, the agony, the obvious delight with which the bitch was slowly peeling layers of skin off Cam's leg, it was sickening. She took it off in thin layers, aided by the sharp scalpel she held, until she had six layers of skin off, there was blood streaming down Cam's leg, and Cam herself was unconscious from shock and pain.

"What kind of monster are you?" Shana whimpered, heartsick at the amount of blood it looked like Cam was losing. "How can you do this to another human being, another woman?"

"Woman? Human?" Rosa laughed, and the sound chilled Shana's blood. "She's a toy, an experimental pet. See, I'm trying to culture human skin," Rosa said absently as she picked up petri dishes and started to culture them. "Right now when burn victims come in, doctors use a synthetic skin substitute cultured from pigs to graft on top of the burn. The problem is that some people's skin rejects the pig skin graft; but it's considered inhumane to take layers of real human skin and create biologically perfect cultures."

"It _is_ inhumane," Shana whispered, fighting nausea. "Jesus, you could have killed her from shock…"

"If the shock when the initial scar tissue was laid down didn't kill her, then this won't either. She's a strong girl. If I can culture enough, I can patch that hole in her thigh I just left as well as start patching her skin. Imagine, she could look as good as you." Rosa laughed. "And then I can burn her all over again."

Shana wanted to throw up.

"Now, as for you," Rosa stopped beside the table, trailed a hand delicately over Shana's arm, then to her thigh as she walked down the table and stopped at the end, looking between Shana's splayed legs to her unprotected sex. "Damien says he wants you punished. Only I have to not leave a mark. No, just how am I going to do that?" She purred as she poked Shana's knee, slightly skinned from their three days in the seaside cave.

Pain. Screaming. Straps squeaked as Shana's entire body, though weakened by a month of starvation and malnourishment, sought to escape. She was barely conscious of what the woman was doing as Rosa introduced something into her body, a small, smooth, bullet-shaped probe, pressed against her cervix until the ring of muscle relented and accepted the probe at the end of a wire. When Rosa withdrew her hand, the wire remained, causing a burning sensation deep inside her body as her cervix closed around the thin wire hanging from the bullet.

More pain, then, as Rosa slipped a larger egg-shaped probe into Shana from behind, but that didn't last long, and Shana lay for long moments after the woman withdrew, shaking with sobs and trying to control her pain. It ebbed, lessened, and she was in control of herself again when the barred door to the torture chamber opened and Damien Kennedy stepped in holding a plate of what looked like scrambled eggs sprinkled with some bits of bacon. From where she lay Shana could smell the egg, could almost taste the salt in the bacon, and her mouth watered hungrily.

Rosa unstrapped her, and Shana sat up carefully, warily eyeing Kennedy, then Rosa, and the plate. Was she finally being given something to eat?

Then Kennedy took two steps away, placed the plate on the floor, and looked back at her. "I know you're hungry. It smells good, doesn't it? It tastes even better. Crawl to it and you can have it."

"I…I won't." Shana slid off the table, stood defiantly.

And the next second she crumpled to her knees on the floor as it felt like someone had kicked her in her lower belly. She couldn't even scream, the pain was so sharp—and then it was gone, and she stared disbelievingly at Rosa and Kennedy.

"Those are electrical probes inside you," Kennedy smiled nastily. "Consider them training tools. I give you an order, you obey, you don't get shocked. You don't obey, and it feels like a horse kicked you in the stomach." Rosa's hand moved, and for the first time Shana saw the small remote control in her hand.

And then the pain kicked in, and Shana screamed and screamed, curling up on the floor, arms weakly trying to cradle the agony in her middle. She felt like someone was stabbing her in the belly with a red-hot knife, and when the electrical shock finally stopped she just lay there for long moments, crying weakly.

"Crawl to the plate." And she did, sobbing in humiliation as she forced herself to drag her tortured body across the few feet of floor between herself and the food she desperately craved; She finally reached it, and just as she was about to reach out and pick up the plate, Kennedy said, "Stop. Put your face in the food. Don't use your hands." She hesitated for a long moment.

Rosa's hand moved and agony exploded inside her body again. "Stop! Stop! Please!" She screamed, begging, pleading for the pain to stop. "Stop, please, please, I'll do it, I swear I'll do it, please…" The agony stopped, mercifully, and she crawled to the food, lowering herself onto her elbows, and started to eat.

The flavor exploded across her tongue and she almost cried with the sheer pleasure. The eggs were bland, but not overcooked or undercooked; not that it mattered when every fiber of her being was focused on getting the food down as fast as possible. The bacon was crunchy and salty, and she knew her body was craving the salt and the protein, and when it was all gone she even licked the plate, though they hadn't told her to do so.

She was swallowing the last little bit when she felt the prick of a needle in the side of her neck, but barely moments later she felt a rush of heat through her body and suddenly her sex was tingling.

_Some kind of drug to make my body responsive,_ she thought dizzily, but the sensations sweeping through her were so intense that she found herself gasping …

Kennedy sat behind his desk, watching the video. He had never, ever seen anything like that before, and he was so hard he ached. "What was that that you gave her?" he asked Rosa, standing beside his desk, curiously.

"Oxytocin," Rosa said, smiling. "Doctors administer it to induce labor in women, but when a woman isn't pregnant it acts as a receptiveness hormone. You saw the results." She smiled. "I also have some doses of an experimental drug called Anafranil. I forget what it was actually developed to treat, but an unfortunate side effect is that someone who is dosed with it can't feel relieved even if they are absolutely insane with lust. At some point I'd like to try it."

Damien smiled. "Hold that thought. I'd like you to try it too. But on my say so. I've punished them separately, now I have to punish them together."

There was a tap on his office door, and he looked up. "Come in."

One of his men stood there, Raul, a huge, burly Hispanic guy. "News, Sir. We found where the women had been hiding."

"Really?" And then Kennedy noticed what Raul held in his hand. "What's that?"

"A table knife, Sir. Found it in the shoreline cave where they were hiding. And the bows and arrows were plainly handmade with the knife."

"Where did she get a knife?" Kennedy snatched it up, examined it. "It's rushed, but she did a good job sharpening it," he said.

"She? The redhead?"

"No. Hole. The Testarossa was so hopped up on drugs she couldn't have clawed her way out of a wet paper bag. Hole must have done this. I'd give real money to know where she learned how to do this. She did good work."

If the guard noticed the sudden promotion from 'it' to 'she' and the hole to 'Hole' he didn't show it. And Rosa had more than enough sense than to mention it, it would only have gotten him angry at her. "There is more to these two than meets the eye, and I want answers. Let me know when they wake up."


	9. Chapter 52:New York

**Chapter 52: New York**

Alex looked up at the soft tap on the door.

And smiled.

It was Ettienne, of course, who else could it be? He smiled as he came into the office, his eyebrow rising as he regarded the paperwork spread out over her desk. "Working late?"

"Yeah." She took the moment to sigh and stretch her arms over her head, working kinks out of her back. "With all of these arrests in what is officially being called 'the biggest ring of pedophiles busted in New York for the last five years'. I'm absolutely thrilled, and so are the SVU detectives, but it's seriously making for a lot of paperwork for all of us."

"Mmm." Ettienne placed his hands on her shoulders, starting a gentle massage of the tight muscles there, and she closed her eyes in bliss, leaning back into his hands. "So how many people have you gotten so far?"

Alex opened one eye, counting the number of orange file folders, each one stuffed with papers, on the table across her office. While normally it was used to interview witnesses, she'd run out of space on her desk for all the files she'd been accumulating and had shifted a lot of it onto the spare table just to make room for the other work. She was literally up to her eyeballs in cases.

And she couldn't be happier. "Twenty three," she said as she closed her eyes and leaned back again. "Twenty-three people who took advantage of Yu's hunting cabin and the amenities he provided." Her eye s opened, and she looked up at Ettienne. "They weren't all men, either. There were couples and even business parties of three or more. Many of them rented the cabin multiple times, this one guy I'm working on right now," she tapped a fingernail on the folder in front of her right now, "He rented the cabin ten times over three years, gave Yu and Cam's aunt and uncle almost thirty grand over three years for that privilege. He was caught out in Kansas and the courts over there extradited him here. I'm trying to get all his paperwork done so when he gets here tomorrow and I interview him I can get a clear idea how many other people I can ask him about and whether he'll be willing to accept a deal in exchange for rolling on the rest of his friends."

"Rolling?" Ettienne quizzed, but his hands never stopped their movement.

"On his third visit to the cabin he brought six friends. Four males and two females. Their names are in Cam's ledger. I'm willing to cut him a deal in exchange for the addresses of those people, I want all of them. Especially the women. Can you…" she swallowed hard. "Can you imagine what it must have felt like for a fifteen year old girl to open her eyes and see seven people standing in front of her ready to gang rape her? And Olivia and I both know that the women can be more vicious than the men. Whoever these women are, they came with the intent to rape and torture an underage girl and they apparently had no qualms about it, so while Cam's not here to tell me what they did do to her, I still want to get justice for her." Left unsaid were the words, _even if she doesn't come back_.

"Her tracker's still beeping. Hasn't faltered. She hasn't been close to death."

"Ettienne, there are many, many things that can be done to the human body that won't cause death but can make the person wish they were dead." Her eyes were haunted as she shrugged his hands off her shoulders. "So that's why I'm working so hard on this." She gathered the rest of the orange folders off her desk, then carried them across the office to leave with the stack of other orange folders. "Each orange folder is a pedophile we've arrested in connection with this case. Each one is someone who paid for the privilege of raping and torturing a vulnerable fifteen year old girl. And I want them all." She leaned forward, placing her hands flat on the table. "Jesus, Ettienne, I want every single one of these bastards. Every time I think about what she might be going through right now I just want them more."

"But if you don't take care of yourself you're not going to see their prosecution through," Ettienne pointed out reasonably, coming up behind her.

She turned to him, edging her hip up on her now-cleared desk as she draped her arms over his shoulders. "I don't need to take care of myself, that's what I have you for," she said, feeling a playful smile tease the corners of her mouth as she looked up to meet his eyes.

He sensed the shift in her mood, responded to it, his own eyes growing mischievous as he put on his thickest Cajun accent. "Oui, Madame, and I am your devoted servant and will be here to take care of you for de res' of your life," he teased, then sniffed. "Is dat de new perfume I bought you?"

"It is," She scooted up onto her desk, sitting on the top as he stepped in closer, their faces now only inches apart. "You have very good taste, Monsieur LaFitte. I have been getting compliments on that perfume all day."

"Ettienne like," he said thickly as he dipped his head to take a deeper sniff, then parted his lips and closed his mouth on the intersection of her neck and shoulder. She moaned aloud at the sheer sensuality inherent in that simple act and tilted her head to the side, swinging her hair out of the way to give him better access to her neck.

He nibbled his way up the side of her neck, then his breath whispered softly past her ear. She had to bit her lip to stifle the cry that threatened to escape as he nibbled gently on her earlobe, flicking her earring with his tongue. "'Tienne…Oh God, 'Tienne…"

"How are you doing?" Clayton asked Olivia solicitously, slipping into his quarters holding a full tray from the mess hall.

"I am so sick of being pregnant," Olivia moaned as she got her hands under her and tried to lever herself to a sitting position in bed. "I know exactly how a beached whale feels. And now I also know why bedridden people are cranky all the time."

Clayton chucked as he cleared space off the table by the bed and put the tray down on it. "I guess it's a good thing that we didn't get out to my parents' place, then," he teased. "My Dad and Mom would be so ecstatic that the baby's this close that they'd be waiting on you hand and foot and you'd be even more annoyed right now than you are already. "

"Like you're not waiting on me hand and foot?" She gestured to the tray on the table beside the bed. "You're bringing me food and drink and whatever I'm asking for however tiny…"

"I want you to be comfortable," he objected. "And Auggie too. And I'm not waiting on you for everything."

"Sure you are. Name one thing you aren't doing for me that I can do myself."

He actually had to think about that one. "Well, I'm not walking you to the bathroom, I acknowledge that you can get there on your own," he remarked with a twinkle in his eye as he took a bite of fried chicken.

She rolled her eyes, making his smile grow even wider. "Like I can't get to the bathroom on my own, Clayton, it's only three steps away from the bed! You might not be walking me to the bathroom but you moved the bed so close to it I can practically pee from here!"

He broke into outright laughter, and after a moment, she grinned reluctantly as she grabbed her fork and speared a stalk of asparagus. When he'd heard that she was supposed to spend her last few weeks in bed, he'd not only insisted that she stay on base with them so she would be close to a doctor if anything happened (despite Doc's assertions that he was not an obstetrician and she would be better off at home) but he'd also gotten Allie to help him rearrange the room so the bed was only a few steps away from the bathroom. Though they weren't supposed to have TVs in their rooms—a rule he had laid down when they first set up shop here under Fort Wadsworth and one that he'd tried to stick to (he didn't want his soldiers getting too comfortable in their quarters, he wanted them to interact and learn to cooperate with each other in their free time, which would lead to better cooperation and closer bonds when they were out on the battlefield. And it had worked) which was why there were several recreation rooms on the lower level—Olivia was different, and no one had begrudged him the use of a TV when he'd dragged an old one out of storage and lugged up to his quarters. He suspected Allie of secretly enjoying the whole thing; in sharp contrast to his earlier 'hands-off' policy when he'd first found out Liv was pregnant, he was enjoying every minute with her. He'd even taken the guys to the apartment and dismantled the crib, taking it apart, packing the pieces in the Hummer and bringing it back here to base to reassemble in his room.

He knew she wasn't ready for marriage yet, and he wasn't either, but he had found himself wondering, more and more, through these last few days of her pregnancy as they both waited with equal eagerness for the little boy that was half of each of them, what it would be like to marry her, to wake up every morning in a regular civilian bed, go off to a regular civilian job, and never have to worry again about whether or not he would be coming home. Not that there was all that much danger for him right now, at the moment; he was a General and, as Olivia had pointed out to him rather acerbically at the beginning of the summer, his job was mostly a desk-jockey position. So really, how much of a difference would there be between what he was doing now and a regular civilian job?

Still, he couldn't imagine leaving his soldiers, leaving this job. While they might have started out as his subordinates, his officers, the bonds they'd formed over the years in this project had deepened to ones of true friendship, far more than just commanding officer and fellow soldiers. He couldn't imagine life anywhere but here, with Flint, Allie, Ettienne, Courtney, Wayne, Charlie, and all the rest…and even though he hadn't known Cam for that long—was it only six months ago that he'd first met her at Camp Mackall? It felt like so much longer—he knew that if neither she nor Shana came back from this mission, he would grieve for both equally. Shana was a longtime soldier and personal friend, been with the project almost as long as Flint and he himself had, and Cam—Cam had been through too much in her twenty-five years, too much pain, too much injustice, and he prayed that at some point, life would start being fair for her, stop trying to kill her and just let her live. She was the strongest person he'd ever known; after everything that had happened to her, to have come out the other side relatively well-adjusted…He'd known soldiers who hadn't been through half of what she had who'd committed suicide, but somehow she still kept trying to get through life as cheerfully as she could. All she wanted was a normal life…when she got back to base he would try to make it as normal as he could.

"Clayton?" He was startled out of his reverie by the sound Of Olivia calling his name, and he blinked and looked up to see her waving her hand in front of his face, trying to get his attention. "Hellooo, Clayton," but her voice, while teasing, was gently sympathetic and her eyes were kind.

"Sorry," he said, leaning forward and taking another bite of his dinner. "I was thinking about something."

"I know," she said quietly, then said, even softer, "They _are_ going to be okay, Clayton. Shana's tough, she'll make it…and Cam's a survivor. She survived when she was fifteen, and she'll survive now. They're both going to be okay."

"Yeah, but are they ever going to be the same?" Anguish choked his throat, but he couldn't stop the words from spilling out, all the grief and anguish and tension that he couldn't display in front of his soldiers because damn it, he was their leader and they looked to him to stay strong. "I keep thinking…all the things that could be happening—and Snake Eyes has been saying that he can feel Shana in a dark place and she's in pain and she can't move, and Charlie's been walking around looking like he's been tortured. Both of them are trying to tell us that they are alive, Charlie says that he can…somehow…feel Cam alive, knows what she's feeling—pain and strong emotions—and even though I know that Charlie and Cam are both Native American and they have training as medicine man and woman from their respective tribes, and that Snake Eyes and Shana have a bone-deep bond with each other and are practically one person in two bodies, I still can't help thinking that they're both laboring under wishful thinking and Shana and Cam really are…" he couldn't say the last word.

"Clayton. Stop." Liv put her fork down and gave him her full attention. "The chip that Cam's wearing would have told us if she were dead or if she'd even come close to death. It's still beeping steadily, and their position hasn't changed at all in almost a week. Your own people worked on that chip, modified it so it would send up that signal, and you, more than anyone else here, know that sometimes you just have to trust your people. And Charlie and Snake Eyes are both saying that the girls are together, that they found each other, so while the plan was to wait the full two weeks before we can go get them, I gather that both men kind of have the feeling that their position isn't going to change. There is nothing that you can do about it right now, Clayton, so stop tearing yourself up over the whole thing." She picked up her fork, dug into her food, then paused. "If you really want to feel like you're doing something, figure out who's going to go on the rescue team when the two weeks are up and start planning for how you're going to go get them and bring them back. You can't, after all, just go charging in there; that little island in the middle of the ocean that Cam's tracer is sitting on belongs to another sovereign state, and there might be some bureaucratic red tape. The more of that you can do now while we're waiting the less you're going to have to do later when the two weeks are up."

He started at her, mouth open. She grinned as she reached over with a finger and pushed his jaw up. "How come I didn't think about that?" he asked finally.

"Because you're too close to the problem. Sometimes it takes someone who has a little distance to explain things to you." She smiled sweetly. "And you're male."

He glared at her in mock annoyance as he picked his own fork up again. "You've been spending too much time with Allie."

"You were the one who hired her. You have no one to blame but yourself." And how could he argue with that?

Charlie uncurled his legs from where he was sitting in the middle of the quarters he shared with Cam and stood, trying to work the kinks out of his legs.

_Cam, sweetheart, I'm so sorry I let you go. I should have tied harder to keep you here,_ even though the rational part of his mind knew that there was absolutely no way he could have possibly prevented her from going once she had her mind set on it. She would have gone anyway; she was that kind of girl. Selfless, giving, willing to do anything for a friend, and if he tried to hold onto her, to keep her from doing what her heart told her she should do, he would diminish her, would put restrictions and controls and expectations on her, and that was something he'd sworn he would never do. _She wants a normal life. This isn't normal._

And as he gathered up the incense burner and the bunch of sage and herbs he'd used to focus his concentration, he thought again about what they'd do when she got back. He couldn't imagine her coming back in any condition to continue as a soldier—She'd still been working through her CPTSD when she'd left, and just knowing that made her current position even more psychologically tenuous. Somehow, when this was all over, he was going to convince her to leave the Army. Yes, he was going to miss the base, miss the friends here he'd known longer than he'd known her…but somehow those friends weren't as important as this one stubborn, lovable, strong, irritating, wonderful woman he'd met and married in the span of only two short months. He remembered the first time he'd seen her, on a makeshift stretcher carried by her SERE training class, her feet cut, swollen, dirty; no clothes except the scrub top Clayton had given her; her skin streaked with dirt and mud and bruises and scars. Oh the scars. When he'd helped Doc in the copter take off the filthy top and seen the expanse of fire-scarred skin, his reaction hadn't been one of shock and pity, as he'd seen on Allie's face; he'd felt shock, and then raw, overwhelming anger at whoever had caused what happened to her. He hadn't known, at the time, what had happened to her to make her look like that; he hadn't known until later, standing in the hallway outside the infirmary, hearing her voice break as she tried not to cry at the horrific memories that she'd kept buried, the emotions she'd kept leashed. And in that moment shock and anger had been replaced by respect and an overwhelming need to make sure nothing like that ever happened to her again. Their marriage in front of the tribe, while rushed, had felt right, and he had never regretted it. Even now with her missing and her absence like a deep wound that refused to heal, he still loved her and wouldn't have traded a single moment they had spent together. His heart wouldn't hurt so much now if he hadn't been so deeply in love with her, but he wouldn't give up that love for anything no matter how much it hurt, and he barely felt his legs give out under him, dumping him to his knees as he bowed his head, tears stinging his eyes. _I love you, Cameron Arlington, Deer-Who-Leads. I will never stop loving you. Please, please, baby, hold on for me. We will come and get you. I will come and get you. I promise that. And they will pay for what they've done to you. I swear by the Great Spirit that they will pay for whatever they've done to you. Just hold on for me, sweetheart, please!_


	10. Chapter 53: Fiji

**Chapter 53: Fiji**

Shana woke as hands grabbed her.

She started to hit out, started to fight, and then the probe lodged in her lower belly delivered a punishing shock to her lower belly and she screamed in pain, curling up on her side. She vaguely heard Cam screaming for them to leave her alone, but the pain was all-consuming and she could barely think.

It stopped, finally, and when the hands touched her again she shrank from it, her drug-fogged mind finally understanding that fight meant pain. She didn't resist as hands dragged her upright, as she was half-dragged, half-carried up the hallway and stairs that led to the main part of the house. Cam was beside her, shoved along the hallway by another guard, but Shana saw a thick pad of white gauze on her injured leg and felt a tiny measure of relief that at least the wound had been treated. Cam didn't seem to be in as much pain either.

They were pushed up the steps to the opulent library, then up into the main house, which they hadn't seen yet. Down a cavernous grand hallway with high, arching ceilings and then into a well-appointed dining room, with elegant cherrywood table and chairs and matching buffet and server. Exquisite glass and crystal lined those shelves and filled those cabinets, the kinds of dishes Shana's mother would have loved to own—and at one end of the massive cherrywood dining table Damien was sitting, calmly eating what appeared to be breakfast; scrambled eggs with fried potatoes and thick slices of toast with melted butter and jam. Shana's mouth watered at the smells.

"Don't get too comfortable," Damien said casually as the two women were shoved to a kneeling position beside his chair. "And don't look so hopeful either. I'm not giving the two of you anything to eat right now—don't want you to vomit once we get under way with the plans I have for you." He said nothing more for a long time, focusing instead on polishing off the food on his plate. It wasn't until he was finished and the butler was taking away the empty plate that he turned and gave them his full attention.

"The one thing I have not been able to figure out from either one of you is how you know each other," he held up a hand to forestall Cam's words. "And don't give me that 'we grew up together' story. There's at least five years between you two. You're in your…what, early thirties?" he gestured to Shana. "And she's in her mid twenties. There's enough of a difference that you would not have had any contact in school, so that means that you would have had to know each other once you were both adults. So. My question for you," he leaned forward, cupping Shana's chin in his hands, "Is where you would have met her. My guess is that you met while working, maybe at this Fort Wadsworth you were talking about when I interrogated you on your arrival here?" Shana kept her face impassive, trying to hide her shock. Surely she hadn't told him about Joe base, their classified work, and oh God, she hadn't told him about Cam, had she?

"But you haven't told me what I want to know. So that's the goal for today. You can make it easy on yourself, tell me what I want to know now. If you do, I'll give you something to eat, because I know you're hungry."

Shana clamped her lips shut, and he frowned. "Still stubborn? We'll see if what I have planned for you today will loosen your tongue." He didn't sound all that unhappy about it—in fact, he sounded positively cheerful. _Son of a bitch. You just want to watch us hurt._ Shana had to fight the urge to throttle him.

He'd turned to Cam in the meantime. "You," and there was a note of real anger, real malice, in his voice. "You orchestrated that escape. We found your hiding place in the seaside cave. We found your bow and arrows and we found the table knife you sharpened to make those bows and arrows with. Now I have a question for you. Where did you get that knife?"

"I found it washed up on the beach." No defensiveness, no anger.

He grabbed a handful of her hair and yanked her head back to meet his. "You defiant little bitch," he hissed. "Well, I'm going to punish you for your part in this little escape, and you're not going to like this." He pushed his chair back, gestured to one of the guards. "Take her outside. Tie her between the whipping posts and let Rosa and Hans know we're ready."

Cam made no protest as she was dragged outside. Shana tried to follow, but was prevented by the guards; they didn't let her move until Damien was on his feet and striding down the hallway; then she was pulled to her feet and forcewalked after him outside.

The day was overcast and cloudy, the clouds low-hanging with the promise of rain. Far off on the western horizon Shana could see flashes of lightning, but nothing close. Good.

Cam was already standing between two tall, upright posts set deeply into the ground, watching passively as her wrists were tied to eyebolts in the posts and the remaining rope wrapped around the posts themselves. Her face was impassive, still as a marble statue, but Shana knew from experience that it meant Cam was hiding her feelings; only Shana could tell Cam was terrified. Kennedy pulled one of the patio chairs over to face the whipping posts squarely; Cam refused to look at him and fastened her eyes to the ground instead.

And then terror closed Shana's throat as Hans and Rosa came out to the garden. Hans carried what looked like strands of barbed wire hanging from a short, fat wooden whip handle; his hands were protected by heavy leather gloves all the way to the elbow, and that sent shivers up and down Shana's spine. Rosa was carrying a lighter whip, several tails of braided, knotted leather hanging from a similar handle.

"The two of you escaped and evaded my people for three days. Now you're going to pay. Since it was Hole's fault, Testarossa will take the whip Rosa is holding and punish her friend with it."

Shana stared in horror at the whip Rosa was holding out to her, and shook her head numbly, terrified. "I can't. I can't do that, I can't hurt her!"

Kennedy smiled. "Perhaps I can change your mind. See the whip that Hans is holding out?" Hans brandished the barbed-wire whip. "If you don't whip Hole with the whip Rosa is holding, Hans will whip her with the barbed wire. Your choice."

"Shana…" Cam's voice was rough with fear. "Shana…please. Please don't let them hit me with that one. Please, it'll hurt less if you do it, Shana, please!" Naked terror in her voice now.

Shana reached for the whip, took it in her hand. The weight felt unfamiliar, and what it represented, pain and anguish for Cam, was even worse. She dropped it. "I can't. Please, I can't." _They won't really whip her with that barbed wire, no one could do that to another human being. They're just doing that to scare us. _

"Shana, please!" Cam screamed, pleading, but the guards were yanking Shana back to where Kennedy was sitting calmly in the patio chair. There was an eyebolt set into the concrete, an attachment point to tie down the furniture, perhaps, but they used it this time to lock Shana down; after locking a leather-and-metal collar around her neck, they clipped a heavy chain to the collar and tethered the other end of it to the eyebolt, shoving Shana to a kneeling position next to Kennedy's chair.

"If you would, Hans." Kennedy smiled in quiet satisfaction. "Start whenever you're ready. I confess I was hoping to see Testarossa whip her friend, but lacking that, seeing her in agony as you whip the skin from her body will be…stimulating."

"He's just saying that to scare us," Shana said defiantly, confidently, to Cam. "He's not actually going to do it."

Kennedy laughed. "How touching. Come, Hans. Start with five. I want all the guards to try whipping her by the time we're done. She gets twenty."

And Hans raised the whip and struck.

Shana's scream of horror blended with Cam's howl of absolute agony as the whip thudded into her back. Hans swung with sufficient force to bury the barbs into Cam's flesh, then yanked the thongs of the whip—the wires—downward by the handle. As he did so, the barbs tore bloody gashes into the scar tissue that partially covered Cam's back, until they finally pulled free with a flick of the handle; then Hans raised the whip again.

"No!" Cam screamed in agony. "No, please, don't, you'll kill me, please…" The pain of the blow had driven her off her feet and she sagged now, unable to stand. "Please, please, I can't take it, please…please!" her pleas rose into a shriek of panic as she saw Hans raise the whip again.

The barbs buried themselves in her flesh again, and this time when Hans pulled the whip free a ragged strip of scar tissue followed, torn loose by the barbs. Shana threw herself forward, unmindful of the chain locked to the collar around her neck until she reached the end of it."Stop!" she screamed, unaware of the tears that flowed down her cheeks. "Stop, please!" Her cries were drowned out by Cam's screams as the whip tore her back again.

Shana threw herself at Kennedy's feet, sobbing. "Stop it, please, tell him to stop. You want me to whip her, I'll do it, okay, I'll do it, just please please, tell him to stop. I'll do it, I'll do whatever you want me to do, just make him stop, please, he'll kill her!"

"Whatever?" Kennedy held up a hand to stop Hans in the act of delivering another blow. "You'll do whatever I want?"

Shana nodded vigorously, sobbing as Rosa handed her the whip. Shana wanted to drop it in revulsion, but she knew the pain caused by the knotted leather thongs wouldn't hurt nearly as much (or cause as much physical damage) as the barbed wire stripping the skin from Cam's back.

"Sh-Shana," Cam was shaking, her eyes glazed from shock caused by the three strokes she'd already taken, but her voice was steady. "Thank you… Just please get it over with…"

Blinded by tears, Shana swung. Her first stroke barely brushed Cam's back, but the thongs touching the bleeding, ragged flesh wrung screams from Cam's lips.

"Harder!" Kennedy's eyes were lit up in sadistic glee as he leaned forward. "Hit her harder or I'll tell Hans to hit her again!"

"No!" Shana swung again, crying, her tears mixing with the rain that was now starting to fall. "No, I'll do it, please, oh God, Cam, I'm sorry, I'm sorry…"

She had no idea when her legs finally gave out under her, and she fell to her knees crying, the whip falling from her limp hands. Cam had passed out at some point during the whipping; her body now hung limply from the ropes around her wrists, blood mixing with the rain now streaming in rivulets down her body. Shana, lost in misery, sick with horror at what she'd done, what she'd been forced to do, barely noticed when Kennedy grabbed her arm and hustled her inside. Her last glimpse was of Cam, hanging unconscious and bleeding.

She barely noticed the opulence of Kennedy's suite. Numb with horror and self-loathing at what she'd done, she barely felt them shove her to her knees on the plush carpeting.

_I whipped her. I hurt her. She was my responsibility and I hurt her. On top of everything else they've done to her, I had to go and hurt her too. _She felt hands on her arm, slipping a needle under her skin. _Drug me. Go ahead. Maybe the knowledge of what I did to her won't hurt so much._ Numb, miserable, she ignored the hands injecting two more needles in her arms.

Rosa smiled as she stepped back. "Double dose of oxytocin, as you requested," she said to Kennedy. "Anafranil to keep her from climaxing, more of the barbitol to keep her fuzzy and also scopolamine to make her hallucinate." She watched as the guards locked a long chain leash to Shana's collar, then wrapped the other end of the leash around one of the heavy posts at the foot of Kennedy's bed. Kennedy smiled as he took his clothes off, watching to see when the drugs would kick in.

Shana's eyelids drooped, heavy, as a liquid warmth pooled in the pit of her belly and spread outward. Unbidden, her mind wandered to Snake Eyes, what he might be doing at the moment, and an image came to her of him in the shower. A smile spread across her face as she envisioned slipping into that shower with him…normally with Snake Eyes satisfaction was only moments away, but this time something was holding her back, because while she could feel sexual tension building up inside her, she couldn't—quite—get there. She used her hands to work herself faster, harder, her body screaming for the release she so desperately craved, but it remained elusive.

She tried, oh God, she tried, until pain from her raw, hyperstimulated body cut through the drug-induced lust. She still tried, sobbing in shame and humiliation and helpless need, until rough hands dragged her wrists apart, tied them to opposite posts at the end of Kennedy's bed, and shoved a cloth into her mouth, stifling her frantic cries of _please, please, I need it, please…_

Kennedy groaned as he sat back in a chair and watched his Testarossa's body writhe. "Exquisite," he said Rosa.

"She's going absolutely crazy," Rosa grinned. "You know, we should try this with both of them…think Hole would do what she could to stop the redhead's torture?"

"Making them do each other?" Kennedy looked intrigued as Rosa brought forward her probes again and slipped them into Shana's body. "Would they?"

"That's the question, isn't it?" Rosa grinned as she hit the button on the remote she held and the probes in Shana's body activated. "If Hole saw the redhead this frantic would she do her friend? I'd love to try it." The three of them watched as Shana's body arched in her bonds, screaming into the gag as the probes in her body stimulated her with electricity. "We could drive her insane with this. I'd say my experiment with Oxytocin and Anafranil together was successful, wouldn't you?"

"Absolutely," Hans and Kennedy said together as Shana arched and screamed again.


	11. Chapter 54: FijiNew York

**Chapter 54: Fiji/New York**

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This chapter is a bit graphic, and I have removed the first half to comply with ratings regulations. Although I tried to structure the rest of the book so reading this whole chapter is not necessary to understand what happens, if you want to read the full text please contact me and I will send you the full chapter.

Snake Eyes sat bolt upright in Shana's bed, gasping as if he'd just run a mile_. It's the drugs, Shana, it's the drugs, don't feel bad! Please! _On top of everything else she was dealing with, guilt wasn't one of the things she really needed to think about at the moment.

He sat on the edge of the bed, shoulders heaving with more than gasps. With sobs. His lover, the other half of his soul, was going through something unimaginable and he couldn't be with her. Couldn't help her. His own body throbbed with his physical response; he'd felt her torment down through this impossible link, this impossible bond they shared. Eyes blurred with tears, he stumbled to the tiny bathroom and stepped, still clothed in boxers, into the shower, turning it on with a quick, angry movement of hand. The cold water that hit him almost made him gasp with shock, but then he gritted his teeth and leaned back, letting the cold water hit him full in front, hoping the temperature would do the trick….

He seemed to be partially in Shana's bathroom at Joe base, partly in that opulent bedroom Shana was trapped in. He could feel Shana twisting, writhing, begging through the gag for the torture to stop; and incredibly, he felt the moment when the drug finally gave way, felt the moment Shana screamed and went rigid as the biggest climax of her/Snake Eyes life crashed through her, and he crumpled bonelessly into the bottom of the tub, barely noticing the cold water pounding his skin.

A long time later—an eternity later—he was aroused from his exhausted half-drowse in the tub by a knocking on the door of Shana's bedroom. "Snake Eyes?"

Charlie. Snake Eyes wondered if the big Navajo knew what his wife had just done to try and save Shana. Wondered if he felt what Snake Eyes had felt. Hoped he hadn't. He struggled to his feet, got out of the tub, then wrapped a towel around his waist and greeted Charlie at the door.

Charlie didn't seem at all surprised at Snake Eyes' state of dress. He just said very quietly, "Briefing in the conference room. Hawk wants to talk to all his senior staff." And he left Snake Eyes to dress.

Snake Eyes was more or less together by the time he reached the conference room. Together in that he was dressed in his usual featureless black with his mask pulled over his face; but under the monolithic exterior he was still terribly conflicted by what he'd felt Shana experience. He'd felt Shana's unwillingness, knew she hadn't wanted Cam to touch her, but at the same time, Cam had done so out of a need to help her, and Snake Eyes couldn't exactly fault her for what had, essentially, been Cam raping Shana.

Hawk walked into the briefing room barely minutes after Snake Eyes sat down. Without preamble, he flipped open his laptop and cued a sound file. The voice that came from the speakers was nervous, female, and spoke in strongly-accented English. "I was asked to call this number by a woman who is being held captive her. Her name is Cam, and she said to say that 'Cam and Shana need retrieval'."

There was a shout of jubilation in the briefing room, instantly stifled by Hawk's waved hand. The voice went on, and there was a note of urgency under the nervousness. "We are on a rich man's private island in Fiji. Cam and Shana are different from the other women who have come here in the past. The owner of this island is hurting both of these women very badly, and I believe they won't survive much longer. Please hurry." The line went dead.

"I was with Olivia. She was having a difficult time. And I missed this call." Clayton sounded… guilty.

Allie snorted, breaking the silence. "Clayton, you can't be sitting next to the phone all day every day. And we weren't expecting to be contacted like that either. Don't beat yourself up over this." They were all aware, by now, of the difficulty Olivia was having in the last few days of her pregnancy. She was confined to bed on Doc's orders, in constant discomfort from false labor pains, and just generally so uncomfortable and miserable that Courtney had exclaimed to Allie, "I'm never getting pregnant!" At which Allie had laughed at her and told her that if she found someone she loved as much as Clayton and Liv obviously loved each other she'd put up with it. And there was no mistaking the fact that they both loved and were in love with each other.

She eyed the phone thoughtfully now as she changed tacks. "That was definitely a Pacific Islander accent. It tallies with what we've been able to pinpoint as the coordinates for where they are. Now, even though we're still about seven days out from our projected retrieval time of two weeks after her tracer stopped, given what we just heard, that woman doesn't think Shana and Cam will survive much longer." She swallowed hard. "I don't even want to know what could be happening to them right now to give her that impression. Let's focus on getting them out."

Duke stirred at the end of the table."I've pinpointed the location of Cam's tracer on a map. It's an island in Fiji, part of an island chain that has few native inhabitants and is mostly the private retreat of the super-rich. The next island over, I fact, was just recently purchased by—" and the name he rattled off was that of a very famous action hero/movie star-turned-producer.

"Wow." Allie raised an eyebrow. "I knew he made a lot with his last movie but I didn't know he made so much he could afford to buy his own private island. I wonder how much he bought it for?"

"Half a million. It's a small island, about 9 acres, undeveloped. Presumably he intends to develop it himself."

"Do we know who owns the island Cam's tracer is sitting on?"

"Financial mogul, big international stockbroker named Damien Kennedy. Holds citizenships in multiple countries, has his headquarters in Amsterdam. White male, late forties. Crippled after a car accident in his teens." Duke pushed a photograph of a man in a wheelchair across the table. "Honestly, he doesn't look like the type to own 'slaves'. And what would he do with them, anyway? He's a paraplegic." He turned to Hawk. "I say we contact Mr. Kennedy. It's possible he owns the island but allows someone else to live there and that someone else is whoever is holding Cam and Shana captive."

"I say we investigate on our own," Allie said in counterpoint to Duke's suggestion. "I've been doing some of my own research into the human trafficking industry and the one thing all the experts say is that there's no way to really tell. You can't look at someone and say, 'there goes a slave owner', just like…just like no one could look at that NFL quarterback and know he was fighting and killing dogs." Duke winced—he'd liked that quarterback and that team. So had Shana, being Georgia-born and raised. "Remember he said first that he let relatives stay there and he didn't know what they were doing at his home—until that cellphone video surfaced of him clubbing a dog to death." Duke winced; there had been a couple of heatedly friendly arguments between him and Shana concerning the QB's guilt and innocence before the video had surfaced. She'd insisted he'd known, Duke said he hadn't, then the video came up in trial and Duke had to admit Shana was right (she'd rubbed it in, good-naturedly.)

"What do you want to do?" Hawk asked Allie.

She leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table as she thought. Then she said slowly, "I want to contact that movie star that owns the next island over. See if he'll give permission for, say, a small group of research students to conduct a few dives to photograph the marine life in the reef around the island. We can take a drone with us, one of the small unmanned ones the size of a bird—As one of the military's elite units, we were assigned of one of Homeland Security's new WAASS-outfitted drones, with that Xaver 800 Through-Wall Imaging System that MIT developed." At Hawk's puzzled look, Allie prompted, "The one that sees through walls and roofs? The ones that Homeland Security wants to deploy across the US pending successful tests?" she nodded at his look of sudden comprehension. "This would be a good test run. We can have the drone fly the island. The cameras will look through the walls and roofs and give us an accurate picture of who's inside the buildings and how many people are on the island. I can ask Mainframe and Jammer if they can program the drone to pick up the tracer signal; then the Xaver 800 can give us a 3D image of where they're being held."

Clayton sighed. "All right. As much as I don't like the idea of conducting a clandestine operation, I can't fault your logic. We'll try it that way. I'm going to leave this in yours and Duke's hands, just keep me in the loop as far as itineraries and plans go, okay?"


	12. Chapter 55: Fiji

**Chapter 55: Fiji**

"I didn't want you to do that." Shana's voice was a whisper in the darkness of their cells.

Cam wanted to cry at the angry tone in Shana's voice, but she didn't have the strength to do even that. She'd known, the moment she'd touched Shana, that the redhead didn't want it—and yet she couldn't manage to be truly sorry for what she'd done, not after seeing the expression of relief that crossed Shana's face right after Cam had finally succeeded. "You were suffering," She said quietly, simply. She couldn't deal with Shana's anger now, and she suspected that part of that anger might be confusion. Shana loved Snake Eyes and was in a healthy relationship with him, but this time she'd been drugged and the drugs had intensified her reaction, leading to confusion. Added to that, she'd been a captive for almost two months, drugged heavily for nearly all of that time, and none of it was helping. Cam couldn't find it in herself to blame Shana for her anger. So, "You were suffering, and I couldn't stand to watch you try to deal with that. I had to do something."

"You raped me!" more anger.

Cam let a few exhausted tears slip from beneath her eyelids. "I'm sorry, Shana. I did what I thought I had to."

Silence for a time; Cam closed her eyes and drifted into that trance between awake and asleep. She wanted to try and dreamwalk, to reach Charlie, but she…just couldn't. She had no strength left. She slipped into deep sleep, tried to escape this nightmare they were caught in, this nightmare that she had volunteered for. _I thought it wouldn't be much different than living with my Aunt and Uncle. Charlie was right, and I was wrong. If I ever get out of here, Charlie, I swear I will never leave you again!_ More than ever, at this moment she desperately wanted him to take her in his arms and hold her, tell her everything was going to be okay.

It felt like only a short time later that the creaking of the barred door that closed the torture chamber off from the hallway that led upstairs announced the arrival. Cam's heart sank as the lights came on, flooding the torture chamber with harsh light, and Rosa came over with three guards.

"Wake up now, dears," she cooed, as cheerfully as a mother getting her children up for school. "Testarossa's needed upstairs, and I want Hole up on the table."

Shana was too weak to fight as two of the guards pulled her to a standing position, but even though she was furious with Cam, she couldn't help but feel a twinge of concern as Rosa and the other guard went into Cam's cell and dragged the younger woman upright. While time seemed to distort for her under the drugs, there was no question about how much time had really passed when she saw the weeping, festering cuts on Cam's back from the barbed-wire whipping. Cam couldn't even stand; she tried to get her legs under her and failed, and could barely manage a weak cry as Rosa just had the guard seize her arms and drag her from her cell. In the harsh overhead lights, Cam's normally slim body now looked emaciated; ribcage in stark relief, her eyes sunken, her cheeks hollow. It wasn't that Shana herself was in that much better shape, but Cam's body had less ability to build muscle from her having lost the ability to store subcutaneous body fat when the fire had claimed so much of her skin eight years before—fatty tissue turned into muscle with proper development, and back again if the muscle wasn't kept in use. Shana also had muscle as well as fat, and muscle tissue took more time to break down.

"What are you doing?" Shana whispered as the guard hauled Cam upright and dumped the girl's body on the steel operating table in the medical theater portion of the torture chamber. Cam screamed weakly as her lacerated, mutilated back made contact with the steel, but Rosa and the guard quickly buckled straps around her wrists and ankles, then attached more across her forehead, neck, shoulders, waist and hips. By the time they were done Cam couldn't move an inch as Rosa filled a syringe.

"None of your business, my dear." Rosa waved a hand dismissively. "Go on up. You'll find out later." She waited for the guard to hustle Shana up the steps and out of the subbasement before returning her attention to Cam, choosing a spot on her neck just under her jaw and injecting the contents of the syringe.

Cam felt as if her throat was on fire. She opened her mouth to scream—and no sound came out. Rosa laughed at her wild-eyed look. "No, I haven't taken away your voice. It's just temporary. What I'm going to do now requires absolute concentration and I can't have you doing all that silly screaming." She went back to the counter, filled another syringe, and came back. "I also need you to remain absolutely, perfectly still, and while I thought initially I'd be able to just strap you down, you're still moving too much so I'm going to have to paralyze you. Again, just temporarily." She smiled, and it wasn't pleasant. "But you'll still be able to feel everything I'm doing to you. You'll be helpless to stop me, helpless to move, but you'll feel everything. And when you pass out—you will, I assure you—I'll just bring you around again and keep going until I'm done."

_What are you doing?!_ Cam wanted to scream, but she was unable to make a sound—or even shake when she saw Rosa come to the table with scalpels and what looked like squares of pink tissue floating in a liquid medium.

What followed was something Cam would never, ever have dreamed of anyone doing. Trapped in her own body, unable to fight or even scream, she passed out time and again as Rosa carefully cut away the scar tissue covering and took the skin grafts she'd cultured from Cam's own leg, stitching the grafts in place over the breast like a woman casually putting a patchwork quilt together. Except this quilt was made of human skin, and she was stitching it in place over the raw lump of tissue that had been Cam's breast. Each time Cam fainted from sheer agony, Rosa brought her around, woke her up just so she could endure more, and more…until finally Rosa couldn't wake her up anymore—she'd slipped into a light coma from shock and pain.

"Oh well. I was almost done anyway." Rosa shrugged as she carefully anchored the last square of skin to the scar tissue over Cam's ribs, then stood back to admire her handiwork.

Except for the dark stitches holding each square of skin together, Cam's right breast looked exactly like her left. Rosa had even managed to acquire a prosthetic nipple, non-functional for what nature had originally intended a woman's breast for, of course, but it made her chest symmetrical. Rosa had even gotten the color of the nipple right. The color of the new skin on the breast was pale in comparison to the color on Cam's upper chest, neck, and face, but that too would correct itself in time; a few suntans and maybe some melanin adjustment? Rosa would have to see. The skin itself had pores and although they wouldn't allow her to sweat since there was no regrowing the sweat glands, her body would be able to 'breathe' through those pores, giving her a little more skin area for thermoregulation.

Rosa smiled to herself as she rigged an IV next to the table. So far her experiment was going exactly as planned, except that the girl had passed beyond waking before she'd finished the stitches. Probably due to the overzealous application of the barbed wire whip, leading to blood loss and lack of strength. She still had one more cultured graft growing; once that was mature she'd slice the graft into smaller pieces and culture more skin tissue so she could replace the scar tissue on Hole's belly and thighs. Given enough time, Rosa planned on giving Hole all the skin she'd lost to fire back.

And then she'd have fun burning her again…

Kennedy smiled at the Testarossa across the room even as the hedge fund manager on the computer monitor cracked some sort of sorry joke. Although the others probably didn't find it funny, they chuckled anyway because Damien had smiled.

Sycophantic idiots. He kept the bland smile in place even as he mocked these lesser beings. All they were interested in was appearing to their best advantage, power-mongering, power-hungry fawning sycophantic idiots who were only interested in what reflected glory from him would do for their reputations.

Not like his beautiful Testarossa. He watched as every muscle of her body tightened again in involuntary reaction to the drugs and the equipment strapped around her hips driving her to yet another climax. By his count, she'd had twelve so far; far more stamina and strength than any slave he'd ever done this to.

Rosa had told him of her plans to operate on Hole's burned, mutilated right breast that afternoon, so after having them dumped in their cells the night before to rest, he'd decided to split them up. Rosa had said that if she wanted this experiment to be successful she had to have it quiet so she could concentrate—and if the Testarossa witnessed what Rosa was doing, there would be no keeping her quiet. So, as much as he would have relished watching her anguish as she watched Rosa skin her friend's breast, she'd just have to content herself with imagining how much pain that caused her.

Not that he'd had any intention of missing the actual process; absolutely not! He had no desire to watch the operation; Rosa's bloodthirstiness was one of the few things he didn't like about the dark Italian. He'd had the camera over the operating table pointed at Hole's face, catching every grimace of agony, every silent scream, every tear she cried. He was impressed with her stamina too; other slaves would have passed out long before she actually had. Rosa had predicted that; the amount of pain Hole had had to endure when her body was burned was considerably more than she'd endure at Rosa's hands, and she'd predicted that she'd be able to get most of the way through the operation before Hole passed out.

It was still troubling him; how they knew each other was a question he still hadn't had answered. But for the next three days he'd have to confine himself to trying to break the Testarossa; Rosa wanted to keep Hole asleep for a couple days to let her breast heal. After that, he had a couple of ideas…

His attention was brought back as the other members of the board started to rise from their chairs. The meeting was over then, after...five hours, his watch said. He switched off his computer, stretched leisurely, and then came over to Testarossa. "Take her to my bedroom. Shackle her ankle to the bedpost, put a blanket next to the bed, let her sleep on it. I want to try getting her to have sex with me willingly."

After all, she'd had enough examples of how much pain he could give her. Time to see what a little mercy could do.


	13. Chapter 56:Fiji

**Chapter 56: Fiji**

She stirred groggily.

The first thing she was aware of was that she was lying on something soft. And under something soft. There was a pillow under her head, some sort of soft blanket under her and over her, and for the first time since she'd been captured, she was warm and comfortable. She almost didn't want to open her eyes—this had to be a dream, one that would vanish when she woke up.

But the sensation didn't vanish, not even when she opened her eyes, and she stared transfixed for a few moments at the thick pile of the lush carpet in front of her eyes. The floor? She was lying on the floor?

She sat up quickly, taking in her surroundings. And her heart sank. They hadn't been rescued; She was in this horrible, hateful bedroom with this disgusting, sadistic bastard slave owner, and she wanted to scream and claw his eyes out.

But there were windows here, and she could see bright sunlight coming in; by the color and direction, she figured it was morning. Somewhere off to her left, she heard water running, but there was no one here at the moment. She started to rise, froze as the chain around her ankle clanked, but when no one came running in she dared to climb fully to her feet and crouch just under the window, peering out just over the sill.

This room was on one of the upper floors of the mansion, and from the window she looked out of she could see the pristine white sandy beach and deep turquoise water surrounding the island. Beautiful—if she weren't trapped here going through hell. That water was lovely curse, because if it wasn't there she could try to break for freedom..

"Ah. You're awake." The deep voice behind her startled her, and she whirled, ducking clumsily below the windowsill and putting her back to the wall. Her entire body screamed with the pain the movement caused but she didn't care; for the moment all she wanted was to keep anyone from hurting her anymore!

She watched Kennedy warily as he walked into the room. Easily, gracefully, completely ignoring the wheelchair that sat unnoticed and unneeded in the corner of the room. Son of a bitch. She remembered his 'business meeting' of the day before. Do your business associates know you aren't really crippled, that their pity is just wasted on you? She guessed not; he seemed like the type to use it to gain sympathy from his associates, and, in the end, just as more leverage.

He smiled at her, picked up something from the top of the dresser and sat down with it on the chair beside the bed. Her entire attention was suddenly focused on what he held; scrambled eggs sprinkled with bits of shredded bacon and tiny slices of sausage; chunks of what her nose told her was butter-fried potatoes, and two slices of toast generously smeared with butter and strawberry jam.

A tiny, involuntary sound erupted from her throat; longing, hunger. She tried to stifle it, disgusted with her own weakness, but she couldn't take her eyes off the plate. Her mouth watered.

"I know you're hungry." Pleasant, even tones, as if there was nothing unusual about holding a plate of food in front of a naked, chained, starving woman. Perhaps, for him, there wasn't; Shana wouldn't put anything past him.

He held the plate out, and she tensed. "Come on. Go ahead and eat. When you're done I've run a bath in the bathroom, I'm sure you'd like to get clean." He put the plate on the floor and pushed it toward her with one foot.

That decided her. With a clash and rattle of the chain around her ankle, she reached for it, grabbed it, hugged it to her as she retreated back to the opposite side of the room, under the window. Then she paused, momentarily confused as she realized there was no fork.

He laughed at her. "What are you waiting for, tableware? Not for slaves." Oh, she hated that laugh. She wanted to throw that plate back at him, food and all, but she was absolutely starving. So she crouched under the window, one eye on him as she grabbed at the food with both hands and stuffed it into her mouth as fast as she could, terrified this might just be another cruel game, that he'd take it away from her and hurt her again. She was disgusted with herself, knowing what she looked like; but animal instinct took over and her only goal right now was to get herself on the outside of that plate of food. Her body was starved for the protein in the eggs and meat, badly needed the calories from the starch in the potatoes and bread, and she nearly cried with the sweet flavor of the strawberry jam that exploded in her mouth.

He didn't say a word until she was done and had put the plate down on the floor, pushing it with one foot as close to him as possible without moving an inch from where she crouched. He smiled pleasantly and picked it up, returning it to a silver tray on top of the dresser, then unlocked the end of her ankle chain from the foot of the bedpost. "Come on," he said, and started for the bathroom; she had to quickly scramble to her feet and follow him or risk being dragged.

He locked the end of the chain around the leg of the bathroom vanity, then leaned against the bathroom counter. She didn't hesitate this time to step into the steaming, almost-too-hot water and sank into it almost blissfully, closing her eyes as she tilted her head backwards to soak her dirty, tangled, matted mass of hair in the hot water. She soaked for long moments, then reached up to rake her fingers through her hair.

Her fingers touched something hard, plastic, and she opened her eyes in startlement. Damien was holding out a white plastic bottle to her, and she seized it eagerly. Shampoo. She popped it open, not even bothering to check it, and poured it on her hair, working it into a lather. And then smiled, in pure bliss, as the scent of ripe peaches rose from her hair in the bathwater.

"I like this on my women," Kennedy smiled. "Smells like the peaches my home state is known for."

Her voice, when she spoke, came out in a rusty-sounding croak. She had to clear her throat and try again. "Where is your home?"

"Georgia. Atlanta, to be precise. At least, one of my homes is there. I was born there and I like to spend my winters there…usually. You've been such a fascinating acquisition that I couldn't help spending my vacation this year here, on my private island." He leaned forward. "So how do you and hole know each other?"

"Her name is Cameron, not 'Hole.' And I'm Shana."

"You are who I say you are," he said, his voice steely. "I own you. You depend on me for your very life. You are not one of those well-bred Atlanta society girls, so stop pretending you have the right to your own name. You're a slave." He leaned back against the bathroom counter again. "So how do you and Hole know each other?"

Shana gritted her teeth. "I'm not going to answer you until you use our names."

He moved faster than she would have imagined, jumping to the edge of the bathtub and grabbing a handful of her hair. "You're Testarossa and she's Hole," he snarled. "Say it!"

She gritted her teeth and clamped her lips closed.

He forced her head under the water and held it there. She fought, thrashing, losing a few precious bubbles of air, but she'd been weakened by her month-and-a-half ordeal and couldn't break his grip. She screamed mentally in despair and hatred at her own weakness.

He dragged her head above water, and she gasped in a huge breath of air. "Say it!"

"No!" she screamed defiantly at him.

He thrust her head under the water again.

This time she was nearly unconscious when he dragged her out again. "Say it!"

"No…please…" It was all she managed before he thrust her head underwater again.

She came to, lying facedown on the bathtub floor, choking up what felt like half the tub of water. As soon as she could breathe, he leaned in close, his hand still tangled in her hair. "Your name is Testarossa. Say. It."

If she didn't, would he try to drown her again? She hung her head, defeated, and whispered, "Testarossa and Hole."

"Good. I'm glad we understand each other." His tone was even, not showing any remorse at having nearly drowned a woman in his bathtub a moment before. "Grab a towel and dry yourself off, then come on out. I have clothes for you."

Clothes? Shana hauled herself off the floor, grabbed a towel, and dried herself off. She hugged the towel around herself as she stepped out of the bathroom, unwilling suddenly to give up even that little bit of modesty.

What she saw made her want to retch.

A maid's uniform. But it was more of a costume for an adult party than it was for a functional maid; the skirt was far too short for modesty, the bodice was so low cut that Shana's breasts would be all but spilling out of them, and the stockings and stiletto heels were more suited to a strip club than a mansion.

Except this mansion.

She didn't want to get dressed in that…travesty of a maid costume. Not one bit. But with him turning a simple event like a bath into a near-death experience, she was terrified that he'd do…something...else to her if she refused to get dressed.

She was mortified when she was done but Kennedy was entranced. He gave her a feather duster and told her to dust the furniture in his room, which she did, acutely aware that he was watching her every move.

Lunch was another humiliating experience—he had a chair placed for her at the dining table with two large…things…protruding from the seat. They were fortunately not large, but they felt enormous to her body when she sat at his command and he apparently found her grimaces of pain amusing enough that he forced her to sit at the table polishing silverware that afternoon while he had paperwork spread out at the other end of the table. Dinner was served with her still sitting on those damn intruders—it diminished her enjoyment of the first real food she'd had in who knew how long; tiny pieces of steak, browned on the outside, pink and juicy inside; new potatoes, tender green spears of asparagus, and at the end, a sweet, delicious peach pie easily the equal (to Shana's starved stomach, anyway) to anything her mother had ever made—and anything she'd ever cooked.

And that night she went to sleep, clean, full, and warm, on a blanket and pillow, covered by another blanket. She felt a little twinge of guilt, thinking of Cam and what Cam might be enduring at the moment; but at the memory of what Cam had done to her, guilt vanished, replaced by shame and humiliation—and anger that Cam had been the cause of that shame and humiliation. _She raped me!_

But those thoughts didn't last long; her exhausted body took advantage of the comfort to slip into sleep, and her last thought was the sudden realization that she wasn't even craving the drugs as much. Had Rosa been giving her decreasing doses of the barbitals that had caused her so much withdrawal agony on the African leg of her trip?

She found out the next day as she was submissively wiping the glass on the front of the many framed awards and certifications on the walls of Kennedy's office. She tried to focus single-mindedly on the cleaning task in front of her. While it was humiliating in the extreme to be performing chores in this outfit, it beat being electrocuted, bound, starved, and drugged. So when Rosa came in shortly after lunch, she forced herself not to react, tried to become invisible to the sadistic bitch while still continuing to do what she'd been told to do.

"So how is your little experiment coming?" Rosa purred as she sat down in a chair across from Damien.

"She's been a good little slave so far. Slave! What's your name?"

She knew what she wanted to say. She knew what he wanted to hear. And fear of what he'd do if he didn't hear what he expected was foremost, so she closed her eyes and mind and said what he wanted to hear. "Testarossa."

Rosa smiled. "And have you found out how they know each other?"

"I asked her. She refused to give me an answer. I thought maybe I'd give her a little more time to discover how pleasant her life here could be if she doesn't fight me."

"You've had time. Now stop playing with her and ask her. I tried asking Hole when she woke up this morning but she refused to talk to me, and I wanted to ask you if I could use the fishing platform to… persuade… her that it's in her best interests to cooperate."

Damien broke into an unpleasant smile. "Of course. In fact, I believe I'd like to take Testarossa fishing as well." He rose from his chair, unlocked the end of her ankle chain from around the leg of his desk, and tugged at it. "Come, Testarossa. I think you need this lesson too."

The bright sunlight out on the small rocky shelf about eight feet off the deep blue water at the north face of the island made Shana blink. And when Rosa brought Cam out by the simple expedient of yanking on a chain hanging from heavy metal cuffs around both wrists, Shana had to blink twice, startled by what she was seeing. Cam now had two whole breasts, both right and left, her formerly fire-burned right breast now covered by what Shana quickly recognized was the tissue Rosa had cultured from the skin she'd cut from Cam's leg. The outer edges of each square of tissue were seamed with tiny, neat stitches.

_She gave Cam a new breast! Now Cam won't feel so self-conscious! _Was Shana's first thought. Then, _So why does she look so exhausted? She looks like she's been through two days of hell!_ Had it really been two days since she'd seen Rosa strapping Cam to the operating table?

Rosa looped rope to the end of the short chain hanging from Cam's bound wrists, then tied one end of a rope around her ankles. The other end of the rope, Shana realized with dawning dread, had a heavy iron ball, something like a cannonball with a large iron ring welded to it that the rope was tied to. "Now, you'll tell me how you and Testarossa know each other."

Cam was swaying on her feet, so exhausted she could barely stand. "We…grew up together…in New York," she stuck faithfully to her story.

"You have a bit of a New York accent. She, on the other hand, speaks no language we ever heard and we've heard a bit of a southern accent when she was drugged and rambling. So try again."

"We grew up in New York."

Rosa gave Cam a shove. Cam stumbled backward, too weak to correct her balance in time to keep from falling, and screamed weakly as she fell backwards. Rosa kicked the ball over the edge, and Shana screamed Cam's name in horror as the ball yanked her underwater. A mass of bubbles rose where she'd gone in as the rope tied to Cam's wrists snapped taut.

Rosa took her time untying the other end of the rope and placing it into the track on a pulley. By the time she hit the button on the winch, slowly bringing up Cam's gasping, struggling form to the surface, Cam looked half-drowned, her shoulders hideously stretched, joints looking close to dislocation from the weight of the cannonball still tied around her ankles.

"Stop! Please!" Shana was still angry with Cam but the anger was swallowed by worry as she saw the look of suffering on Cam's face. "Stop, please, you'll kill her!" Either by drowning her or dislocating her shoulders so she screamed underwater and seawater filled her lungs. "Stop it! Stop it!"

"How do you know each other?"Shana hesitated, torn. What could she tell them that they would believe? The slight hesitation was enough for Rosa to send Cam into the water again.

"Stop! Stop!" _The best lie is one that has a bit of truth to it,_ whispered a small bit of her training from the back of her mind.

She did her best to look defeated, as if they had finally wrung the truth from her. "We worked with each other once on a humanitarian mission in Africa. I was captured there and sold into slavery by a woman named Sandra Velasquez."

"Sandra. I know that name. My procurer in Africa. Suffered a rather unfortunate fate when there was a revolt on the slave base." He smiled. "See, the truth wasn't that hard at all. Bring her up, Rosa."

Rosa hit the button to start the winch that would raise Cam's dripping body from the sea. She was unconscious as she came up, and Shana moaned, "She's not breathing, oh god, she's not breathing…"

"Wakey wakey!" Rosa sneered as she released the winch. Cam's body started to plummet back into the water, then was brought to an abrupt stop as Rosa hit the 'emergency stop' button.

Cam's scream of agony as both her shoulders dislocated echoed across the water.


	14. Chapter 57: Joes in Fiji

**Chapter 57: Joes in Fiji**

The turquoise water, green island sitting like a dark green emerald in a setting of white-gold beach, the sun and simple beauty of the setting should have been a paradise for Allie and Duke. Instead they were tucked into the wheelhouse of the boat they'd rented at one of the many resorts that dotted the Fiji Islands.

It had been a simple matter of calling the agent of that actor/movie producer and getting permission from him to dive around the island. Although they hadn't had a chance to speak to the actor himself, the agent had been absolutely certain that his client would be fine with it. "He's always glad to help out research students. It's absolutely not a problem. Go right ahead."

So Duke and Allie had made flight arrangements, rented a boat, and were now currently here anchored just off the south tip of the island, preparing to deploy their drone over the larger island that Cam's tracker was sitting on. From where they were anchored they could see the target island's rocky western flank, but that was all and both Joes were itching for better views.

The drone they were using had been developed by the military for use in remote searches of hostile territory. The infrared-capable sensors could easily pick out the thermal signatures of human bodies among the sand dunes and primitive structures used by many of the terrorists in the Middle East. Then the geniuses at MIT had come up with the Xaver 800 Through-Wall Imaging System that could see through many types of building materials from as far as 65 feet away and still be able to give you an accurate picture of who was inside a specific structure, how many, and what they were doing. While Allie could see the value of such technology in military combat applications, she was less sure about the ethics of its use over American soil and she was looking forward to talking to Liv and Alex about it after Liv had Auggie.

Right now the WAASS drone was hovering about 65 feet in the air over their boat, close enough for Allie to see Duke manipulating the drone's controls. She waved to the drone, watched her figure on the drone's video camera monitor wave back.

Duke chuckled. "Okay, enough playing with the toys. I think I got the hang of this thing. Let's see what we can find out." He sent the drone on a high arc over the island.

It was a small island, as islands went, but was still substantial at 27 acres. As the drone circled it, Allie saw a magnificently lovely palatial mansion crowning the peak of the island. "Wow."

"Wow indeed." Duke had the drone hover over the mansion for a moment. "Wonder where he gets the power to run that building?" As the drone started to criss-cross the island, he saw the solar facility on the south side of the island and raised an appreciative eyebrow. "Solar. So there has to be at least one specialist here on the island to maintain and run the solar facility."

Allie counted the smaller cottages scattered around the crown of the island near the mansion. "Those must be servants' quarters or cottages," she said, adding dots to represent the cabins to the paper map they were trying to construct of the island. "They're all sort of connected by this kind of faint road that tracks all over the island, but that road isn't used often. I'd venture a guess and say most of the time the people on this island walk to where they want to go, and the road is probably only for the owner's electric golf cart or something."

The cabins were all ringed by gardens or pasture—Allie saw one cow and a number of chickens in the pasture around one of the cabins. Another seemed to be devoted to growing vegetables, to judge from the neat rows of green leafy plants. "They have everything they need to be self sufficient there and sufficient resources that would make a beach siege ineffective," Duke said at last, studying the monitor. "If we intend on raiding this place we'll have to plan on an aerial assault, landing people on the roof of the mansion to subdue it before we attack the outlying cottages—"

"What's going on over there?" The drone had curved outward overlooking a trail and come in at a northeasterly angle, and Allie saw movement on a rocky shelf overlooking what their topographical map had indicated was the deepest water anywhere around the island. A good spot for deep-sea fishing, she mused as she positioned the drone with a command to loop back on the island's lagoon. What she saw made her gap in horror. Duke, on hearing that sound from her, looked up at the screen and then swore once, explosively—then fell silent as he concentrated on focusing the camera on what was happening.

They watched in horrified anguish as the tall dark Italian woman shoved Cam off the fishing platform into the ocean—then brought her up, then dropped her again. The third time she brought Cam up Cam seemed to be barely breathing; they then clearly saw Cam screaming as the woman 'woke' her up by dislocating her shoulders.

Shana rushed forward as the winch dragged Cam back up over the side of the fishing platform; they could see her crying as she untied Cam's wrists. The well-dressed man standing there pulled Shana back as he snapped his fingers and two men stepped forward—guards, Duke supposed—and hauled Cam upright. The woman shoved Shana into line behind the two guards and Cam's half-conscious figure, then brought up the rear as the entire group disappeared into a door in the rocky island cliff face.

"Oh—my God—" Duke turned to look at Allie, found her white as a sheet, her hands clamped to her mouth as if she were trying to stop herself from vomiting. He quickly tapped in a command to the drone to return to the boat and focused on Allie. "Allie. You okay?" And found his own voice shaking.

"I—yes, I—" She shook herself, tried to bring herself under control with a visible effort. "Oh God. It's been so long since we saw Shana, and it feels like forever since we left Cam at the Amsterdam market even if it's actually only been a couple of weeks."

Duke sighed. "I know what you mean. You know, after having seen this—I know it hasn't quite been two weeks yet, but I think we can justify asking Clayton to speed up the timetable up a bit." He quickly keyed up the laptop and called base.

Shana stumbled on the ridiculous stiletto heels down the dark corridor toward their cells.

Her ears sill rang with the sound of Cam's screams as the younger woman 's shoulders dislocated. The guards weren't all that gentle with her either as they dragged her with them, half-dragging her by her dislocated arms and half carrying her in their own.

After that first agonized scream Cam hadn't had the strength to cry out again. She just maintained some sort of exhausted, monotonous sobbing as they dumped her on the floor of her own cell and shoved Shana into hers. It wasn't until they left that Cam managed to stop crying. "Sh-Shana?"

Despite Shana's determination that she was still angry with Cam, her heart almost broke at the sound of that tentative whimper. "It's okay, Cam. Lie down and rest. Save your strength."

"Can't…can't keep going…nothing left." There was something Shana had never heard in Cam's voice before: defeat. Helplessness. Shana felt a chill run through her; it sounded like Cam was giving up. "Shana…up to you."

"What's up to me?" Shana knew their conversation was likely being taped, but at the moment she didn't care; she felt that Cam was telling her something important and she crossed her cell to lean against the bars that separated her cell from Cam's. "What's up to me, Cam? What are you talking about?"

"I…wasn't captured…in the Congo." Labored, tortured breaths. "Allie and Duke…inserted me into the Amsterdam slave market…to find you."

She knew that much.

"There's a tracer chip…like Alex's…implanted next to my ear. As soon as we got here, it started a two week countdown. At the end of that countdown…they'll come to get us."

Shana's heart gave a wild leap. "They know where we are? They're coming to get us?"

Cam nodded, a small smile crossing her tired face. "Yes."

Shana wanted to shout with joy—but then she stopped "Wait. You haven't said anything about this since now." Granted, there hadn't been a lot of time for them to talk but Shana, as Cam's commanding officer, should have known about this. You couldn't keep secrets in a POW situation.

"I…couldn't tell you. I couldn't risk…them knowing."

Ice filled Shana's voice. "You trusted yourself to keep the information secret but you didn't trust me." Cam opened her mouth to say something, but Shana rushed on, anger filling her. "I'm your commanding officer, Corporal Arlington, and you couldn't trust me? Why the hell are you telling me now then, if you couldn't trust me?"

"I don't think I'm going to make it." Cam said it quietly. She wasn't being entirely truthful—she didn't just _think_ she wasn't going to make it, she _knew_ she wasn't. When Rosa had dragged her onto the fishing platform and Cam saw Shana standing there (albeit wearing a skimpy costume) Cam had seen that Shana's hair was clean and dry and had smelled the scent of peaches. She hadn't even felt any jealousy; she hadn't been washed or fed in so long…the IV that Rosa had left in her arm for most of the last two days had been full of the necessary nutrients to keep her alive but hadn't actually been food. Her stomach hurt from hunger, she was lightheaded and dizzy from thirst, and her eyes refused to focus properly—signs she knew from her past captivity hat se was hitting the end of her body's resources. She was just glad that Shana seemed to be worth enough to these people that she would be kept alive and in reasonably good shape.

When she'd been underwater she'd seen bones. Corpses. Skeletons. They littered the seafloor below the fishing platform, and she knew then that if she died, this was where she'd end up. Fed to the fish. It should have horrified her, but instead all she could manage was relief that her body would still be here and therefore the tracer. And she had decided to tell Shana so that Shana wouldn't try to escape. It was hopeless for Cam herself but it would be worth it if Shana survived. That was all that mattered now. "Shana, please. Listen. I couldn't tell you—"

Shana wasn't listening. Couldn't listen. For two months she'd been through unimaginable experiences; drugged, beaten, tortured, sold. She'd had no control over any of the things that had happened to her, and that loss of control fueled anger deep inside her; anger at her own shame, her own helplessness, her inability to control what was happening. All the rage, the anger, the helplessness she felt at her own inability to control herself or the situation she was in came to a head and she cut loose her anger on the only thing, the only person, available there to take it. If she'd been able to think clearly, she would have stopped her next words. "You're supposed to tell me these things, Arlington. And you didn't. Didn't think you could trust me, huh? Fine. Don't talk to me again. You're on your own now." She angrily retreated to the far side of her own cell, as far from Cam as possible, and refused to speak to her again. When the guards walked in with Rosa, presumably to bring her to Damien, she left with them without a backward glance.

Numb, Cam watched her go. It shouldn't hurt. She wasn't going to make it anyway, so it shouldn't matter…but it did, and she couldn't keep from crying as Rosa indicated she should lie down on the table.

Rosa prodded her still-healing breast. "Hmm. Giving you that saltwater bath seems to have done wonders for the stitching, hmm?" Cam barely had strength to cry out as Rosa snapped her shoulders back into their sockets, a fact which seemed to amuse the dark Italian woman. "Looks like we pretty well beat all the fight out of you, haven't we, sweetie?" She cooed, smiling at Cam as she slipped out of her clothes. "All right. Now, I saw that little display you put on for us—I saw how you took care of your friend. I decided, as my reward for putting your breast back together, that I'll have you do the same for me."

Cam obediently started, but she was determined not to give Rosa the same satisfaction she'd given Shana. It was the last thing she would ever be able to do for her friend, and she knew it, and she didn't want to cheapen the memory by pleasing Rosa.

"You're not trying!" Rosa slapped Cam's cheek. "Do what I told you or I'll make you regret it!"

Anger surged in Cam. _Bitch._ She was not…going to…wait. She was going to die anyway. Might as well get some small bit of satisfaction…

Her tongue found the tiny nerve-rich bit of soft tissue at the core of Rosa's body. A moment longer to make sure she could do a thorough job of what she intended on doing, then…

Jaw tightened. Teeth bit. Rosa screamed.

Two guards rushed in, clubbed the slave savagely, economically, across the back of her head. Only then did the jaws relax as the body slumped. By then, of course, it was too late; the two guards stared in speechless horror and couldn't even bring themselves to touch the tissue that had been severed from Rosa's body by Cam's teeth.

Clayton was, as luck would have it, sitting in his office with Liv and Flint when his computer beeped. Doc had declared that with Liv so miserable and in so much pain from the little constant contractions she'd been experiencing for the last week, he wasn't really willing to wait anymore. The sonograms all showed Auggie doing fine, full-term and strong, and Doc was planning to induce labor the next day, so Clayton was reviewing minutiae with Flint when Duke called.

One look at Duke's face and Clayton knew it wasn't good news.

When he saw the video the drone's cameras had taken, he understood. Shana, he'd noted with relief, looked mostly fine although the ridiculous maid's outfit she wore showed much more of her than Clayton ever wanted to see. Cam, however…she looked terrible. Skinny, starved, her back a festering mass of cuts and welts from some horrific brutal whipping, he couldn't imagine how she'd survived this long—and he couldn't imagine how she'd survive much longer.

"We have to get them out. Damn that two week timeline—we have to get them out _now_." Duke's voice was flat. "They are going to die if we don't."

"I agree with you. And now we know that banker that owns the island is indeed mixed up in this—that was him standing there on that ledge."

"Allie and I noticed that. Damn it, Clayton. I thought the guy was paralyzed but he seemed to be doing quite well standing on his own."

"Call the FBI." Olivia broke in, her face pale. "Call them, let them know you have proof that Shana and Cam are on that island. Call whoever you need to in order to get this done—Cam's back is badly infected and she's going to die if we don't get them help, soon."

"I agree." Clayton turned to Flint. "Get on the phone with the FBI and Homeland Security. Tell them we have proof that Shana's being held captive, tell them by who, show them this video. I want us there on that island as soon as is humanly possible—"

He stopped speaking as an odd expression crossed Olivia's face. "Liv? Are you okay?"

She started to stand. "Um. Fine. I think…" and suddenly her hands flew to her belly as a huge contraction, one that they could all actually see, rippled across it along with her sudden scream. "I think…I think my…water…just broke!"

Flint took charge immediately—fortunately, because Clayton looked like he was frozen in panic. "I got this, Clayton. We've known this was coming for a couple of weeks, so I got this. Get Olivia to the infirmary; your leave starts now." He saw Clayton's wild look at the paperwork on the table, at Duke and Allie's worried faces. "We got this, Clayton, go!"

Liv cried out again as another contraction hit, and all thought of everything but her, and the incipient birth of his son, fled Clayton's mind. He vanished from the conference room as Flint turned to duke and Allie. "I want both of you to stay there. I'm going to talk to the Secretary of Defense, see if we have a naval vessel in the area. If we do, we can scramble a team—Snake Eyes, Charlie, a couple more of our people plus Stretcher and Lifeline—and land them on the vessel. You can rendezvous with the ship, join them in the assault on the island, and get Shana and Cam back. Sit tight, both of you; you'll hear back from me on what we plan on doing very, very soon. In the meantime, keep an eye on that island!"

"Aye, Sir!"


	15. Chapter 58: BaseFiji

**Chapter 58: Base/Fiji**

Shana swallowed hard as Damien rose from his seat behind his desk. His face was a mask of black anger as he took two swift steps across the office to her and smashed his fist into her belly.

She doubled over, almost choking as she tried to get her breath back. He grabbed a fistful of her hair, yanked her head back and snarled, "Thought you were clever. Thought you'd get me to swallow a lie. Well, you thought wrong, slave."

He released her hair, letting her fall to her knees on the floor. "I heard you talking to Hole in your cell, did you think I wouldn't? Or did you just let slip one of your so-precious secrets?" He leaned forward. "You called her 'Arlington'. I assume that's her last name. Most people don't call each other by their last names unless they're in the military, or law enforcement. So I want the truth, and I want it now, or so help me, as much as I didn't want to put scars on you and reduce your possible resale value, I'll whip the skin right off your back if I have to. I have spent my entire life building this empire, I will not have it ruined by one little nobody slave like you! I have my suspicions as to who you really are but you will confirm that for me. Now who are you, really, and how do you and Hole know each other?"

Shana clamped her mouth shut. She was not going to talk to him. Two weeks, Cam had said. Two weeks, and the Joes would come looking for them. She had no idea how long they had actually been here already but she suspected that they could, quite possibly, be literally only days away from rescue. All she had to do was keep quiet. She could do that, even if Cam thought she couldn't.

"Fine. We'll do this the hard way." Kennedy snapped his fingers and the two guards on either side of the door sprang to life. "Get those ridiculous clothes off her. I'm done playing nice with her."

Shana didn't even try to fight them as they grabbed handfuls of the maid costume and ripped until she was naked again. She did, however, start to struggle as they dragged her out of the room, down the stairs, and into the torture chamber—and straight into a tangle of trouble.

Damien stared as two guards walked up the stairs carrying a stretcher that held Rosa asleep on it. "What the…" He caught Hans' sleeve as the little German doctor was about to follow the guards upstairs. "Hans! What's going on?"

Hans gestured grimly upwards to Rosa's somnolent form. "Rosa tried to force Hole to perform the same service on her that she performed on the Testarossa," he said grimly. "Hole bit off a…rather important part of Rosa's anatomy…before the guards heard heard Rosa screaming and managed to get them separated. I gave orders that Rosa be carried up to her room-she's sleeping under painklling drugs right now—and I was going to come find you and ask what you wanted done with Hole. Your rules are that any slave who injures the staff be killed, they can't be allowed to get away with it—but I also knew that you wanted Hole because she keeps Testarossa in line—"

"No. Not anymore. Kill her." Damien smiled. "No, actually, wait. String Hole up in the barn. She can hang around until Rosa wakes up, and then Rosa can decide how she wants Hole killed. We know her—it'll be slow, extremely painful, and eventually fatal, but it'll be one of the most spectacular executions we've ever performed here."

Hans nodded. "Very well. And Testarossa?"

Damien frowned grimly. "I had it with her continued defiance. So far I've hesitated to scar her because she'll be worth more at auction unscarred, but I can't have her continue to defy me. I'm going to try whipping her, and if that doesn't work, well…I'll move on to some slightly more persuasive methods."

Hans smiled. "Would you like me to stay and watch, then?"

Damien shrugged. "Only if you want to. I know you want to keep an eye on Rosa."

"I do. The guards should be able to help you out, though." Hans smiled at Damien before continuing up the stairs.

Shana braced herself for a hard whipping as her wrists and ankles were tied between the two tall whipping posts set in the basement floor. She remembered being beaten on the cargo ship coming from Africa, but as the first lash streaked across her back and wrung a scream from her lips, she understood that this was going to be harder than anything she'd ever endured before…

"How is she doing?" Courtney asked Alex worriedly as she burst into the medlabs almost at a dead run.

Alex opened her mouth to answer—then shut it with a wince as Olivia's scream reached their ears from one of the operating rooms. "Doc doesn't seem to be too worried at the moment, so I hope it's a good sign."

"How long can it possibly take?" Courtney checked her watch. "Her water broke like six hours ago. How long does it usually take? Jesus."

"I think Clayton had a little more to do with this than Jesus did," Alex couldn't help the joke. Courtney glared at her in mock ferocity, then giggled a little. Alex chuckled.

Courtney sobered. "But seriously, Clayton's been there the whole time, encouraging her to push and holding her hand when she's in pain. It's a good reaction, after how he was through the first trimester with the stupid 'hands-off' policy he was trying to make himself abide by."

"But that was as much Liv's fault as it was hers," Alex reminded her. "Because she hasn't had a lot of luck with men, she doesn't open up readily, nor does she trust easily. So while it may have driven all of us crazy, Clayton trying so hard to keep his promises did more to get him on Liv's good side than anything else."

"But it drove us crazy too," Courtney sighed.

"Can't argue with you there." They both fell quiet as yet another scream echoed through the infirmary from the operating room…but this one was different.

The scream changed; from the sounds they'd been hearing for the last few hours to…something different. There was an edge of panic, of fear, in it now, and even if they hadn't known something was wrong by the change in sound, they would have figured it out when they heard Clayton cry Olivia's name.

Courtney flew into the operating room with Alex only a step behind. Inside, Liv was limp on the table, her face white; Clayton wad as close to panic as Courtney had ever seen, and Doc…

Doc had a small bloody bundle in his hands. As soon as he saw Courtney, he snapped, "Court. I need you. Take the baby, get him cleaned up. Liv tore and she's hemorrhaging, I need to get her into emergency surgery _now_! No, Clayton, stay, I need you, you have to hold her together—" and moments later Courtney and Alex were staring at the closed door of the operating room, which had been draped very suddenly in tons of sterile blue paper and everyone swabbed in sterile gowns.

Auggie had been lying very still in Courtney's hands for a couple of minutes, but with the sudden absence of noise, he chose to make his presence felt. His squeals announced to the world his indignation at being forced into the world this precipitously, and drew Court and Alex's attention down to him. "Come on, little guy, let's get you cleaned up."

Shana cried out at the sudden stinging slap of icy water against her skin.

The cry of shock was immediately echoed by a scream of pain as she tried to straighten from a position slumped forward in the cradle of ropes between the two whipping posts. It felt like someone had drained every last ounce of strength from her body with the whipping, and she understood now why Cam had looked so limp and boneless after she'd been whipped. Bracing yourself for each impact was physically exhausting.

Damien tangled a fist in her hair and jerked her head up to meet his. She trembled; her memory of what he'd asked her while he whipped her was faint due to his inexpert but still effective injection of pentothal, but when she finally looked up and saw the fury in his eyes, she knew that she hadn't told him whatever it was he'd wanted to know.

"So once again you prove yourself the equal to truth drugs and my persuasiveness," he said, and there was no smile now. Just pure malice. "If you're so determined to be a martyr, then so be it." Now a smile, vicious, slow, lazy; the words were spoken to a guard but his eyes never left hers. "Crucify her."

Shana stared in shock. "You can't be serious," she croaked finally, finding her voice. "You're just saying it to get me to talk. Just bluffing."

"I never bluff, my dear, I am absolutely serious. I keep my word."

There was a large crucifix, a life-sized cross, against one wall of the chamber. Shana had seen it before but never wondered about it; it had never occurred to her to wonder what it might be used for. Ropes were attached to the top of the cross, allowing it to be either pulled upright or lain down on the floor. They lowered it to the floor now.

It took six of the guards to pin her struggling, thrashing, screaming body down onto the cross; her whipped, bleeding back pressed against the splintered, raw wood, and the pain gave her added impetus to try and get up. But the guards brought ropes over, lashing her wrists firmly to the ends of the crossbeam, then reinforcing it with more rope around her upper arm, just above her elbow; then more rope around her ankles, tying her ankles to the upright part of the cross. She wept hopelessly, shaking, her eyes squeezed shut as she waited for them to start raising the cross, and allowing her body to hang by the ropes.

What she saw instead was another guard coming over with what looked like two huge nails in his hand. It was then that she understood that they were going to crucify her _with nails_. She lost it, then; her pride, her dignity, her self-respect as she broke down crying and begged him not to do this, begged him to spare her, to _please, please, please, don't do this_…and his only answer was that if she wanted to be spared, she should tell him who she really was.

And this was the one thing she simply could not do.

And when Hans delicately positioned the nail in between the radius and ulna bones in her lower arm, just above her wrist, she stopped being able to speak; the agony as the first blow of the hammer drove the six inch long spike nail into the flesh of her arm rendered her incapable of speech. She couldn't speak, couldn't think, couldn't do anything but scream as the two long nails were driven into each arm, between her lower arm bones; hot blood trickling down her arms, splattering the floor.

She was barely conscious of them untying her ankles, lifting them up and spreading them apart, but the pain as a hard wooden block was slipped into a peg at the front of the crucifix brought her to partial awareness. She could barely focus on his explanation, that it was created for the purpose of letting the crucified person rest their weight on it, causing pain as the body's weight came to rest on the hard angled block of wood…but also an attempt to prolong life by not allowing the body's full weight to hang completely from the arms. She did hear him say, quite clearly, "If you want to stop this all you have to do is tell me who you are."

But as the guards started to crank the cross upright and she felt the nails in her lower arms take the weight of her body, awareness of who and what she was slipped away as she lost contact with the ground. Her last thought as sanity slipped away was _Snake Eyes…_

Cam half-roused to dizzied consciousness as hands hauled her upright to a standing position. She knew she was in for it. When she'd been a captive of her Aunt and Uncle, she'd used her teeth on one particularly repulsive…creature…. who'd asked her to do something she'd particularly hated. When she'd refused, he tried to force her anyway. She'd bitten him—inadvertently, and she still felt sick to her stomach at the thought, but her aunt and uncle had beaten her nonstop for nearly a day.

What she'd just done to Rosa was so, so much worse than what she'd done to that long-ago client, and these people were much, much more ruthless than her Aunt and Uncle had been. But she couldn't bring herself to care; darkness swam at the edge of her vision, she was weak, couldn't stand up straight, and as they dragged her out of the torture chamber to the brightness outside, then into the cool darkness of the large barn that Kennedy used to store jet skis and the small, powerful motorboat for the giant manmade lagoon on the top of the island, she couldn't even bring herself to be afraid of the coming ordeal. They would kill her, she was as certain of that as she was of her own name, and she couldn't even find it in her to be afraid of the prospect. There was actually a sense of relief that it would finally be over, and her only regret, as she saw what awaited her in the back of the barn, was that she would never get to tell Charlie just how much she loved him. She'd left her cabin, all her things to him; she hoped someday he'd find another woman who could make him as happy as he'd made her. Her life had been full of pain and conflict and turmoil, and the only time she could remember having been so totally, blissfully happy was with Charlie at her cabin. Two months.

She cried out weakly at the pain in her wrists as they looped rope around them, ach arrangement tight figure eight around each and between both. The other end of the rope was tied to the loops of what looked like a very thick rusted chain hanging from a winch over the boat dock, obviously meant to be used to haul engines out of boats to be worked on.

She was dragged upward until her toes just barely touched the dock. Here Hans stopped and wrapped thick chain around each of Cam's ankles, then attached a small boat anchor to the other end of each ankle chain. Without warning, he then kicked the anchors off the dock into the water below.

The anchors hit the water, went under, and Cam screamed as the weight dragging at her ankles increased the pull on her shoulders, already sore from having been dislocated once in the last day, now threatening to dislocate again. Stretched between the anchors on her ankles and the ropes on her wrists, she could barely breathe, and spots swam in her vision.

Then the first stroke of a whip hit her back.

They didn't spare her this time. There was no reason to; she felt it in every impact of the whip against her back, every biting cut the lash left behind. They didn't intend for her to survive this, they wanted to kill her, and it was almost a relief as she sensed the darkness hovering nearby, ready to take her away from this nightmarish hell. She begged for it, pleading with death to come and take her away, begging for this all to finally end.

She seemed to see Charlie's incorporeal form standing by her, felt his anguish and sadness as he put arms around her, as he cupped her chin in his hands. _It's okay,_ she tried to console him, _it's okay, you can let me go, Charlie._

_It's not your time yet, Cam, it's not time for you to go yet._ Even as she was trying to puzzle that out, he stepped past her, and she saw his face darken in absolute fury as he snatched the whip from Hans' hand and threw it away, not caring as it sank below the water of the boathouse. Hans screamed, a short, high-pitched sound as his whip was yanked out of his hand by a ghostly force and sent sailing, and he gave a yell of panic and tore out of the boathouse screaming something about a ghost. Cam felt the whipping stop, felt the sharp pain slow to a dull eddy, and smiled as she slipped into welcoming darkness. _Thank you, Charlie…I love you…_


	16. Chapter 59: Plans

**Chapter 59: Plans**

"So this is where she finally cropped up?" The FBI guy said conversationally as he sat back and looked at the map of the Fijian island chain that Flint put up.

The Homeland Security suit snickered. "I guess she decided to have herself a nice tropical vacation," he grinned.

Flint gritted his teeth and counted to ten before he turned to face their guests. It was an effort; what he really wanted to do at the moment was shake some sense into the DHS guy. "We sent an advance team to the area with one of the Wide Area Surveillance drones we'd been assigned from the Department of Defense—"

"Did it work?" Mr. Homeland Security leaned forward, intensely interested. "Did the system work?"

Flint had to bite his tongue again. He wished he could tell them it hadn't, that it was a piece of junk that should be thrown away, because he knew that each successful test of it meant it was one step closer to being deployed over American soil, but this was a matter of Cam and Shana's life, and the technology did have the potential for useful and ethical applications in both civilian and military situations. "The technology worked. In fact, it brought back this video." He cued the video that Duke had transmitted back from the island.

The two men were silent as the video played. They didn't say a word until the video clip was over and Flint paused it. That was when the DHS guy said, "The Asian girl looked terrible but I saw no evidence to support your assertion that the redhead was there under duress. She didn't appear to be there unwillingly, she wasn't tied or chained or restrained in any way."

Flint stared at the man open-mouthed. "Are you kidding me?"

The man stared at Flint. "What's your take on this, Warrant officer?"

"Master Sergeant Shana O'Hara is a dedicated US Army officer. Cameron Arlington is her subordinate, and she is responsible for Arlington. Both of those women would have done everything to try and ensure each other's safety. Yes, I think Shana could have already tried to make an escape, but she wouldn't leave Cam there and if Cam couldn't go with her Shana wouldn't leave." He pinned the FBI man with one of his patented 'Flint' stares.

"And yet Arlington doesn't look like she'd last another day but O'Hara looks outwardly fine, not coerced or threatened in any way."

"Shana O'Hara is one of my subordinates. I know her. There is no way she would willingly be wearing…that." Flint gestured to the maid costume Shana was wearing on the screen. "She was forced to put that on. Look. Irregardless of what you might think of Shana, Cam looks horrible and you have to admit that she looks like she's in need of rescue. So let's go get them first and bring them home, then ask questions."

The Homeland Security suit stood, pushing back his chair. "We'll discuss this with our superiors and let you know what we decide." Flint opened his mouth to protest, but the man cut him off. "We realize time is of the essence. You'll hear from us within 48 hours, okay?" And the two men left, shoes clicking on the floors.

Flint slumped in the chair at the top of the conference table. "So all we can do now is wait—"

"We can't afford to wait," said a new voice. Charlie's voice, and they all looked up as he and Snake eyes strode into the room. Both men were full of a grim urgency, the tension in their bodies speaking of their distress.

"What's wrong?" Flint felt himself stiffen. "What happened?"

Charlie spoke for both of them, his voice rough with emotion. "Flint, when I came here there was a lot of talk about a military base being no place for Native American mumbo-jumbo." He carefully didn't mention who had called his spiritual beliefs 'mumbo jumbo'. "But you all gave me—and later, Cam—space and time to practice whatever we wished, and you've never let your unbelief color how you treated a member of the team or how you handled a situation. I know I'm asking for a huge vote of trust from you; I know I'm asking you to put your faith in what I'm saying now, and it goes against what you believe—but I'm begging you to trust me, now. Cam and Shana are going to die if we don't get to them. Fast."

Alex stood from where she sat at the end of the table. "What happened? What's wrong?"

Very softly, never taking his eyes off Flint, Charlie said, "I was dreamwalking and I felt Cam being hung by her wrists and whipped. And Snake Eyes—he felt something much worse." Snake Eyes' fist was curled tightly around something in his palm; at Charlie's words he opened his hand and let what he was carrying fall to the tabletop.

A rosary.

They didn't understand why he'd put it on the table until Snake eyes grabbed Flint's pen, a sheet of paper and scrawled on it, 'they crucified Shana', and held it up.

A collective gasp went up; Flint went pale and stared at it for long moments. "I've known both of you too long to doubt you're telling me the truth," he said finally, shakily. "But for now we've done everything we can do. I've followed the chain of command, told everyone I had to tell, and the only thing we can do now is wait. It's nearly nineteen hundred hours now; we won't hear a decision from any decision makers today."

At the end of the table Alex stood and reached for the phone in the center of it, pulling it toward her as she sat down. "What are you…" Flint started to say, but she held up a hand for silence and he stopped, slightly puzzled, as she finished dialing a number apparently by heart.

"Yes, my name is Alex Cabot. Private Alexandra Cabot. I'd like to speak to the Secretary, please." A pause, and Alex smiled faintly. "No, I'm pretty sure he'll recognize my name."

A moment later, and Alex smiled as she apparently heard a different voice on the line. "Good evening, Mr. Secretary, I'm surprised you remembered me." As she finished speaking, she hit the 'speaker' button and the voice, which Flint well-remembered as belonging to the Secretary of Defense, filled the room.

"An unexpected pleasure, Ms. Cabot. Wait, it is Private Cabot, isn't it? You've never officially been discharged from the service, so you're still a part of that classified military unit, right?"

"Yes, and it's about a member of that unit I'm calling." Alex didn't want to waste words. Too much time would be lost, and when she'd met him he struck her as the no-nonsense, straight-talking type. "I'm going to get right to the point. One of the members of this unit, Master Sergeant Shana O'Hara, went missing a couple months ago in the Congo while on a humanitarian mission, captured by human traffickers. We were unable to find any trace of her through official channels so one of our other soldiers volunteered to go deepcover to find her, equipped with a tracer." She took a deep breath. "We sent a drone out to scout the location of the tracer, and it came back with some shocking video. We have reason to believe the volunteer's effort to go undercover was successful, but the tracer is also signaling that both our officers could be in urgent distress and we have to move fast to save their lives."

"And you want me to grease the wheel for you—"

"Yes, sir." Flint broke in at Alex's nod. "Warrant Officer Dashiell Faireborn, interim unit commander. Our unit is fully staffed and armed and ready to go. All we need is your permission, and a rather conveniently-placed naval aircraft carrier in the middle of the Fiji islands on which to set up an FOB. We're looking at a quick, surgical strike; come in, grab our people, apprehend the guy who's holding them captive if at all possible, and get out."

"And what are you going to do with whoever is holding your officers captive?"

"Turn him over to the FBI for international crimes."

"But your unit is a military unit, you will need to have a team of FBI and Homeland Security Agents with you. And I don't know if you've noticed, but Homeland Security's relations with the Department of Defense are a little strained lately over issues of legal residency and wrongful detention for many of our troops—and current and ongoing issues with simply not allowing our troops on board civilian flights because a similar name happens to be on the no-fly list."

Flint blinked; no, he hadn't known—but before he could say anything, Alex said with bland casualness, "Then Homeland Security should welcome the opportunity to conduct a joint exercise between the DHS and the DoD in the interests of shoring up intergovernmental relations."

There was silence for a moment, then the Secretary laughed, loud and long. "You have a point there," he said, still chuckling. "When I talk to the head of Homeland Security, I'll make sure I tell them that." He sobered. "All right. At the moment I have the naval aircraft carrier Columbia on their way to Fiji for some training exercises in warm water latitudes. Since time is of the essence, if you leave your base now, you can be in Los Angeles by tomorrow morning, and catch an Air Pacific non-stop flight. It's going to take about ten hours, but you should be in Fiji by this time tomorrow night, and be ready to conduct a dawn raid in the morning. Now, the FBI and Homeland Security do need to be involved in this, but I can cut Homeland Security down to a token 'witness' force only and let the FBI and the Navy spearhead this."

"I have two people on the ground over there already, First Sergeant Conrad Hauser and Staff Sergeant Allison Hart-Burnett. They're the ones who took the drone out there and brought back proof that our missing people were on the island. As soon as the Columbia gets there they can talk to the Navy guys, plan an attack. The rest of the group can join them tomorrow evening if that's all right with you."

"That will work out. Good luck, Warrant Officer. Oh, by the way…how is Clayton?"

"He's currently on leave at the moment," which was completely true but Flint didn't mention why. "And I really don't think work is foremost on his mind either." Also true and Flint was also not going to mention any causes.

To his relief, the Secretary didn't ask for specifics. "Work hard, play hard. I don't blame him for wanting some time off. All right, you have your battle plans. Was there anything else you needed, Ms. Cabot?"

"That was all, Sir, thank you, I just didn't know any other way to get the ball rolling on all of this."

"Well, you did the right thing coming to me, and I'm glad I could help. Good night…and remember I'm still waiting on a decision from you as regards your future career with our JAG unit!" They could hear the smile in his voice as he signed off.

The silence in the conference room was finally broken by Flint's muttered "Wow. Talk about connections."

Alex leaned back in her seat with a small smile on her face. "The problem is that you work by-the-book. Just like your chess games with Allie and I; you know all the classic, straightforward moves, you play according to the rules, and then suddenly Allie or I will do something completely unexpected and you have to scramble to try and counter that. Sometimes, Flint, you just have to know when to throw the rule book out the window and fly by the seat of your pants."

"I'll remember you said that the next time we play chess," Flint said with a smile, which grew serious as he looked at Snake Eyes and Charlie, both standing silent and immobile by the conference table. "You heard the Secretary. We'll be in Fiji tomorrow night and we'll have Shana and Cam back by morning of the day after tomorrow. I know…I know what you said that they're dying, I…Jesus…the thought of Shana crucified makes me want to throw up. But we also don't have clear proof—evidence—that Shana is…" He sighed. "Look, Snake Eyes, I can't tell anyone that she's dying and have them believe me. The Secretary is willing to scramble to get us there, and that's the best we're going to be able to do. Even you on your own couldn't get there that fast." They locked eyes for a moment, and it was Snake Eyes who looked down first, acknowledging the truth of what Flint had said. "That having been said, however, I want both of you involved in the rescue. Doc says he wants to stay here and keep an eye on Clayton and Liv, so Stretcher and Lifeline will go with Spirit, Snake Eyes and Wild Bill to meet up with Duke and Allie in Fiji. Let's pack light and move fast. When you have the girls safe, let us know and we'll be able to arrange a medevac flight back here." Snake Eyes nodded once, curtly, and left; Charlie followed behind him, and the door closed softly.

Flint slumped into his chair, wearily closed his eyes. "This whole thing has been nothing but a nightmare, starting from when we first got Clancy's orders last May till now. I hope it'll be over real, real soon." He opened his eyes just in time to catch the guilty look on Alex's face. "Don't feel guilty, Alex. This is not your fault."

"Yes it is," The blond lawyer said quietly. "If it hadn't been for me wanting to go back to the Congo to find Shandi and the other missing children, we wouldn't have been there for Shana to have been kidnapped."

"And we wouldn't have wanted to go with you if we hadn't met you on General Clancy's orders either." Flint pointed out. "And we wouldn't have Cam here with us. She'd have died from the abuse during training, Clayton wouldn't have been there to save her life. Charlie wouldn't have found the love of his life. And Cam wouldn't have been one of the scouts on the second Congo trip and wouldn't have been there to teach the Congolese how to make weapons to defend themselves with. And she wouldn't have been there to volunteer to go undercover to get Shana out. So don't beat yourself up over all this, okay?"

She gave him a faint smile as she stood from the table; he stood with her, opened the conference room door for her. "While we're on the subject of Clayton, how is he doing? And what happened? I know Liv's in a coma but what happened?"

"She was in the process of delivering Auggie when one of the internal scars she sustained when she was tortured in Colombia ruptured. She hemorrhaged and went into shock; Doc performed emergency surgery to stop the bleeding and gave her a massive transfusion but she slipped into a coma anyway. Clayton's been so upset. He holds Auggie and talks to him but his attention's been on Liv and it's basically been up to Court and I to feed, change, dress, and care for him. And neither of us knew the first thing about babies—Courtney had to find instructions on the internet just so we could figure out how to properly wrap him in his blanket! We've been digging out and reading every book Liv has on 'How to care for a baby' but we both agree that we'd make terrible Moms—neither one of us seems to have any mothering instincts at all."

"The great Alex Cabot finally admits there is something she can't do! Will she recover from the shock?" Flint exclaimed in mock consternation.

Alex swatted his arm playfully. "Stop that."

He grinned at her. "Will miracles never cease?" the grin got wider. "I'll tell Wayne to stalk Courtney with a camera like Snake Eyes stalks Shana with a camera. Get a picture of Court with Auggie's spit-up all over her shoulder, then post that in his quarters right next to that poster of her as a reminder to him of the inevitable consequences…" He started laughing at the thought.

Alex smiled too but she said quietly, "The real miracle is if we get Shana and Cam back alive."

He stopped laughing.


	17. Chapter 60: Rescue Part 1

**Chapter 60: Rescue Pt 1**

Pain.

Its world had narrowed to nothing but pain. It had lost its voice screaming long ago; what came from its dry mouth and cracked lips was just harsh croaking driven from it by the constant, never-ending agony. Agony from the iron spike nails driven into her wrists between her two lower arm bones. Agony from the ropes, wrapped too tightly around her wrists. Agony from its chest and its sex.

Early on, after the initial pain from being crucified had ebbed a bit, the being known as Shana had realized vaguely that the ropes actually served a purpose, and not just to tie her down. The nails had been very carefully placed so as not to damage the nerves, blood vessels, and muscles in her arms; when she pulled herself up by her wrists to relieve the horrific pressure in her lower body where the saddle had been placed, she was pulling against the ropes, not the nails; if she'd pulled against the nails, she would have probably damaged her arm even more.

It proved to her that Kennedy wasn't planning on killing her; if he had actually planned on killing her she'd have been left to hang on the nails alone. And the whipping she'd endured, while it had been horrific to her at the time, had actually done very little physical damage; it had caused her excruciating pain, yes, but little permanent physical damage. She already knew just how brutal he could be, having seen the intense delight he'd gotten from watching Cam's back be torn open by the barbed wire whip. And the saddle could have been spiked or made of something meant to really hurt; but while it was made of hard, unyielding wood, it was wood that had been sanded smooth, therefore making it marginally more comfortable than it otherwise could have been. It was just inflicting soft tissue trauma—bruising and swelling—between her legs.

But while she was struggling to endure her own ordeal, trying not to think about how much blood she was losing from the nails in her arms, she'd thought briefly about Cam, wondering how Cam was doing. She was still upset with Cam for what she'd done, but she was still a subordinate, and Shana was still responsible for her. She still didn't know exactly what Cam did to Rosa, but she was glad the sadistic little bitch was hurt. She'd been a lot like Sandra.

But as time wore on Shana was less and less able to think. The pain had been overwhelming at first, ebbed for a little bit, and left her conscious and still able to think; but pain was a cumulative thing, and as it accumulated, she was less and less able to think.

Kennedy had come in at some point, and asked her a question. By that point, however, pain, hunger, and growing overwhelming thirst had taken control of her, and she couldn't even make sense of his words, figure out what he was asking. Fuzzily in the back of her mind she remembered that there was something she was supposed to be keeping a secret from him, something she wasn't supposed to tell, but she couldn't remember what it was.

But he'd been furious. One of the guards had lowered her cross so that it lay on the floor, and the sudden relief, her body weight no longer hanging from the ropes and nails on and in her arms, made her cry.

And then crying evolved into screaming as he reached into a small canister with a pair of tweezers, extracted a bee from the canister, and deliberately held it over her chest so it could sting her. He did first one side of her chest, then the other. And then he focused his attention, and his bees, a little lower.

By the time he ran out of bees and interest in this aspect of her torture Shana was delirious with pain. No longer able to endure what he was doing to her, her conscious mind shut down, leaving her with only instinct and reaction, an animal in pain. When he asked her again who she was, after he'd let the last bee sting the nerve-rich nub of soft tissue at the core of her body, she was no longer capable of answering him even if she'd wanted to. He, lacking the medical knowledge that Rosa and Hans had that would have told him he'd pushed her too far, misunderstood her inability to respond for continued stubbornness and ordered his guard to raise the cross up off the floor again and leave her for another day.

The pain-blind animal called Shana left alone writhing on the cross never registered their absence. All it could think of was pain; all it could process was pain. Its whole world narrowed to the pain in its back, in its arms, on its chest, in the burning, white-hot agony between its legs, and the harsh croaking it made now was its only way of expressing with and dealing with its pain. It could only hang there, and endure, until someone released it.

Pain. Pain in overstretched arms, in dislocated shoulders. Pain from tendons and muscles strained, pain in chest muscles as the tortured body continued to struggle to draw breath against its owner's will.

Cam didn't even have the strength to keep her eyes open; her eyelids were too heavy. She was at the end of her resources. She hadn't had any water or food in Goddess-knew-how-long; her stomach had been hurting with hunger but now she wasn't feeling even that.

She desperately wanted to die; every breath she let out she promised was going to be her last; but each time, no matter how she tried to hold it, her body betrayed her by struggling in one more breath. Just one more. And then one more again.

The only thing that made this bearable was that she wasn't completely alone. There was a ghostly presence beside her, around her, sometimes; Charlie, she'd identified him. He was dreamwalking, using Navajo trance techniques to project himself across the distances separating them. When she'd first felt his presence with her, a few days after they'd gotten here, she'd been ashamed that he would see her like this, afraid of what he would think of her and what she was doing to try and survive this situation. But now all she could feel was heartfelt gratitude for his presence, grateful that at least she wouldn't die alone. He didn't have the physical strength necessary to release her, to unchain her ankles from the weights on them, to untie her wrists from the rope tied too tightly around them, but his simple presence was enough to help her when she could feel him. He couldn't be with her all the time but the memory of him helped her hold on when he wasn't there.

The sound of footsteps echoed in the boathouse, and she raised her head wearily. Rosa was standing there, her face pale against her mane of dark hair and wild dark eyes. "You bitch," she snarled at Cam, and there was a bright, mad light somewhere down in the bottom of her eyes. "You horrible, fucking little bitch. You've ruined me, do you hear that, RUINED ME!"

From somewhere deep inside her, Cam managed to find one last small bit of hatred-born strength, and smiled. "From where I am I don't see the problem. You're not the best I've done, and you hardly had anything there. Are you sure you aren't a virgin?"

Rosa stood there for one moment, her face almost purple with anger, then she snapped her fingers to the guard. "Get her down. I want her taken down to the torture chamber." As the guards started to unwind the rope that bound Cam's hands from the cleats that secured it to the wall, Kennedy asked her, "What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to take from her exactly what she took from me," Rosa snarled. "We have an acetylene torch down there—I'm going to burn hers out of her so she'll feel every last bit of the pain she caused me!"

And all Hell broke loose.

Snake Eyes sat on the edge of his seat on the helicopter seat tensely.

He'd spent the last couple of weeks in a fog, brought on by restless tension and sleeping pills. The tension was because he badly wanted to go out there and find Shana; the sleeping pills were a desperate attempt to try and reach her. The trance-like state brought on by his martial-arts meditation was very similar to Charlie's Native American 'dreamwalking' trance, but while he could see what she was enduring, he couldn't actually be there where Shana could sense him, as Cam could sense Charlie. Charlie had offered advice about that; he said that Snake Eyes was still new to this, and Shana was also new; some part of her might feel that Snake Eyes was there but her admittedly pragmatic and practical mind wouldn't accept what she felt as actual truth because it was 'impossible' that Snake Eyes could be there. But being that close to her was rewarding on its own, so he'd been spending as much of his waking hours as possible in a trance, and the sleep brought on by sleeping pills let him be with her too.

Charlie, too, had been spending a lot of his time tranced out and dreamwalking, but not nearly as much as Snake Eyes had, and when he got up, he bullied Snake Eyes into getting up too. Although the dojo was Shana and Snake Eyes' haven, Shana and Cam had spent a lot of time there together as they worked through Cam's PTSD flashbacks and Shana taught Cam the proper way to handle swords, and as a result both women had a strong connection to the dojo. Charlie and Snake Eyes were virtually living in it now.

It was also the one place on base where they were guaranteed privacy. The dojo had always been the one area of base that was completely sacrosanct; no one dared intrude without Snake Eyes' permission, not even the greenest recruit. It just had that air about it. And with Shana missing, and Snake Eyes walking around looking so lost, no one had had the heart—or the balls—to disturb his solitude. With Shana around, Snake Eyes was human, approachable; until this happened, even Snake Eyes had never noticed how people tended to talk to Shana as if she were him; she really had been his voice, and he was completely lost without her.

He'd woken from one meditative trance screaming silently the day before yesterday. Charlie had been crouched over him. "You fell over and threw your arms out and started convulsing," Charlie had told him, and Snake Eyes, still gasping with the 'ghost pain' in his arms, yanked his bloodstained sleeves up. Both men had seen the puncture wounds, the horrific evidence of what was happening, and there had been absolutely no doubt in Charlie's mind that Shana had been crucified. And while both men felt that although their friends might have appeared skeptical they believed what Charlie and Snake Eyes were telling them, there was little actual evidence to prove it, and the two day timeline had been the absolute best anyone could do.

The _USS Columbia_ had met Duke and Lady Jaye at the main Fijian island, and the two Joes had quietly brought them up to speed on what the 'training mission' was actually about. By the time Snake Eyes, Charlie, and the rest of the team arrived in Fiji the _Columbia_'s crew had been fully briefed—and were fully angry. Allie had showed them the footage from the drone, and every last crewmember who had seen that video was shocked and outraged at the callously brutal treatment Shana and Cam had received. Not a single person doubted that both women were being held against their will; so when two members of Homeland Security and two members of the FBI showed up, the _Columbia_ crewmembers gave them the barest hint of civility as they went about preparing for the assault on the island.

It had been worked out that the assault on the island would be multi-pronged. Since Captain Callahan had made it very clear to the FBI and DHS suits that his crew desperately needed training in amphibious attacks—sea-to-land beach attacks, they were taking four naval cutters to each side of the island, while the Joes and an air assault crew would land on the helipad at the top of the island in two transport helicopters and storm the mansion at the top of the island peak. While Homeland Security decried this as being unnecessary, Captain Callahan insisted that it was, and the two stiffs could do nothing but back down and wait.

"They're down there. And they are both still alive." Charlie's face was drawn and tired, exhaustion making the chiseled features of his face even sharper. "But Cam's…fading, she doesn't have much time left, and Shana…" He looked at Snake Eyes, who shook his head. He'd been unable to feel anything from Shana in the last half hour except blinding, excruciating agony, and it was so overwhelming that he'd had to deliberately try and block it out so he could focus on trying to rescue her.

The Joes barely waited for the helicopters to touch down before they were out of them, running across the tarmac. Charlie had seen the boathouse at one end of the giant lake and knew that was where Cam was; he headed unerringly for the structure and they burst in the door just as Rosa finished speaking.

The guards didn't even try to put up a fight; the expression in the naval assault crew's eyes when they saw the battered, bleeding, barely conscious, clearly-tortured body of a young woman hanging there in front of them promised instant death if they so much as tried to resist. Cam started crying weakly, almost hysterically, as she saw Charlie. "Charlie, please, please, make it stop…"

Stretcher snapped, "Duke, Snake Eyes. Grab the chain on those cannonballs and lift them, take the weight off her wrists!" Duke grabbed the chain to one ball and Snake Eyes grabbed the other, and the sudden relief from the weight made Cam give a sobbing scream as she took her first deep breath in almost a day. Allie unwound the rope from the dock cleat it was wrapped around, and Charlie caught Cam's body as Allie lowered the girl to the dock.

The mere movement of her arms made Cam scream in horrible pain, and Stretcher dropped to his knees beside her. The first touch of his hand on her grotesquely swollen shoulders made her scream hysterically, and he shook his head. "I can't treat her like this," he said grimly as he reached for his bag and drew out a syringe; at Charlie's questioning look he said, "I'm going to put her in a medically-induced coma to take the pain away until we find Shana and can get both of them back to the ship. So go! Find Shana!"

"Downstairs," Cam's voice was a faint whisper. "Hidden door—library—torture chamber downstairs…" her eyes focused on the syringe Stretcher held, and she begged, "Sleep…please…"

"Go get Shana. I'll stay with Cam and Stretcher," Charlie said, and Duke gave a curt nod as he and half the naval team followed Snake Eyes. The other half stayed behind, arresting the guards and helping open up a stretcher to carry Cam's unconscious body back to the helicopter that had been designated as 'medical'.

Snake Eyes was somewhat familiar with this place, having seen it during his tranced contacts with Shana, but he wasn't actually prepared for just how massive and opulent the place was. He had come to a stop, caught in a split moment of indecision, when a dark-skinned native Fijian Islander woman came around the corner. Although they must have looked menacing, she approached then unhesitatingly. "You have come here for the Testarossa?" Most of them could barely understand her English, but Allie stepped forward unhesitatingly, said something. Duke translated for the rest of them. "Do you speak Hindi?"

The woman's eager nod was followed by a stream of words. Allie started translating even as she started moving. "She has been trying to help Cam and Shana—here, they're called 'Testarossa' and 'Hole.' She's the one who called Clayton and left him the message."

The woman led them down a flight of steps and into an enormous library. The Navy assault troopers with them looked awed by the opulence, but the Joes, focused on finding Shana, barely spared a glance at the surroundings; the woman had slid aside a bookshelf behind the massive cherrywood desk and led them down yet another twisting, winding staircase, this time with steps that appeared to be cut out of the bedrock of the island itself, until finally they stood at the foot of the stairs. One of the Navy troopers gave a choked exclamation at what they saw; the huge cavern, cut into the rock itself, with a surgical theater at one end, what was clearly a pair of cells at the other end with a thin blanket and pillow inside each one.

And then their eyes fell on the grotesque tableau to one side of the cells and everything else was forgotten.


	18. Chapter 61: Rescue Part 2

**Chapter 61: Rescue Pt 2**

Allie's first thought was absolute shock. _Oh my God, what have they done to her?_ Although Shana's body wasn't as physically damaged as Cam's was, at least on the surface, what Allie could see was bad enough. The nails were like pins, transfixing a delicately pretty butterfly to the rough wood of a mounting board; the ropes just reinforced the impression. Shana's breasts were two red, hideously swollen bumps on her chest, and her sex was also swollen and red over the ankles tied to the foot of the cross.

And there was blood between Shana's legs.

Duke was already in motion, although Allie knew he, too, was in shock and trying to hide it. His voice was flat and mechanical as he forced himself to act now, react later. "Snake Eyes, grab the bottom of the cross and steady it until it's flat. I don't want to risk jarring it in any way, or hurting her any more than she's already hurting." They could all hear the broken, harsh-voiced whimpering coming from Shana's cracked, bleeding lips; the sound was ripping Allie's heart out. The last time she'd heard anyone make sounds like that was Alex, on their return trip from the Congo.

As soon as the cross was flat on the floor Snake Eyes was beside Shana, cradling her head in his hands, smoothing her hair back from her forehead and dropping kisses on her temple, practically the only place on her body that wasn't bruised, cut, or bleeding. Shana seemed to respond to that; although there didn't seem to be any sense or reason in her glazed eyes, she did quiet slightly once Snake Eyes touched her.

"Don't start untying her." Lifeline's voice cut through Allie's shock. "Right now the ropes are holding her arms still. If you untie them and she starts to move her arms, she could cause permanent damage." He was checking her arm carefully as Snake Eyes continued to try and soothe Shana. "They placed these nails very, very carefully to avoid nicking her blood vessels, muscles and nerves, and the ropes are tied just tight enough to keep her from moving her arms too much and possibly crippling herself."

"How are we going to get her off?" Allie winced at the plaintive note in her own voice.

Duke's lips tightened into a thin line. "Way I see it only way to keep from possibly crippling her trying to get her off is to cut the head off the nail, then lift her arm up and off the spike itself." He turned to the island woman. "I need two towels, wet, with cool water. And I need a rotary cutter or something that will cut the head off this nail with." The woman nodded and ran off.

Snake Eyes had his canteen out and was carefully tipping water into Shana's mouth. She was swallowing greedily, thirstily, and Allie took in Shana's too-thin form, the bruises and cuts on her torso as Lifeline examined her other arm, then the rest of her body. "What happened to her—to her chest?"

Lifeline shook his head. "I can't say for certain, but I think…some kind of stinging insect. Bees, maybe."

"Bees?" Allie's voice cracked. Jesus, this was getting worse by the minute.

"Allie, you have to pull it together, okay? Snake Eyes is focused completely on her, and Duke has to focus on getting her physically off the cross. I need you to help me now." Lifeline's voice had an edge to it.

With an effort Allie forced down her horror and anguish. "What do you need?"

"Find me a sheet or something we can put over her. I need to see where this blood is coming from."

Allie went to the cells, grabbed a blanket from the floor, and came back. Lifeline draped it over Shana's body, then reached for the ropes tying her ankles down.

As soon as she felt hands on her legs Shana went crazy. Wild, animalistic sounds tore from her throat, and she thrashed in terror. Lifeline quickly drew back, gritting his teeth.

"I can't treat her while she's like this. Damn it."

"Stretcher put Cam to sleep, can you—" Allie started.

Lifeline shook his head. "I can't put her to sleep until her arms are free."

"If she's drugged unconscious while we're taking her arms off the nails, she won't exhibit any reaction if we do something wrong and I won't know I've crippled her until she wakes up. I won't risk that. " Duke spoke tersely.

And at just that moment the woman came back with the two wet handtowels Duke had asked for, as well as a small Dremel rotary tool. And with her was a big Islander. Male. "My husband," she said by way of explanation.

Duke nodded as he took one of the wet towels from the woman. He quickly flipped out the blade of his utility knife and cut a small hole in each one as Allie watched curiously. It wasn't until he knelt next to Shana's arm and laid the cloth over her lower arm in such a way that the head of the nail poked up through the cloth that Allie realized why he'd asked for those items; the cool cloth would protect her skin while they used the rotary cutter to cut through the head of the nail.

As long as she lived, Allie would never, ever forget the cutting process that followed. Revived a little by the water she'd drunk, Shana's agonized screams bounced off the hard rock surfaces of the subterranean torture chamber as minute vibrations, caused by the Dremel cutting through the spike of the nail just under the nail head, traveled down the nail and vibrated against the inner surfaces of Shana's two lower arm bones. Snake Eyes crouched wordlessly next to her, his forehead pressed against hers as if trying to communicate mindlessly. Allie spoke constantly, a repeated litany of "It'll be okay, Shana," and "Hang on there, we'll have you free as soon as we can," but looking at Shana's glazed, blank eyes, she doubted that Shana heard her at all. She doubted if Shana was even still there to see her; when Cam had CPTSD flashbacks, her eyes got that unseeing, empty look; Shana had that too, now, and Allie's heart twisted painfully in her chest at the sight.

It seemed to take an eternity for the cutting process to be done, and Allie saw several of the naval assault troopers who had come with them step out of the room, the sheer horror of the scene too much for them. The Homeland Security stiff stepped in, eyes narrowed, but when he actually saw Shana nailed to that cross his eyes bugged out a bit and he beat a hasty retreat. Allie spared one moment to feel vicious satisfaction when she heard the choked retching sounds from the hallway, then dismissed it in favor of concentrating on her friend.

"Got it!" There was no mistaking the satisfaction in Duke's voice as he and Lifeline took up a station on either side of Shana's right arm, and Allie knelt next to her left, joined a moment later by, of all people, one of the FBI. "All right, untie her arms; Snake Eyes, try and keep her as still as possible. We have to lift her arms straight up off the nails; any tilt to the right or the left could hit a nerve in her arm and cripple her permanently."

"I'll untie her arm. You lift it," the FBI man said to Allie brusquely, who nodded. She heard Duke plead with Shana to brace herself as he counted to three, and then Shana's scream bounced off the wall as Allie and Lifeline lifted her arms free of the nails. For a moment Allie wasn't sure if their attempts at caution had been successful, but when Shana's fists curled in an involuntary spasm of agony, they knew they'd avoided permanent injury.

Duke swiftly wrapped the wet towels around Shana's arms, tying them off firmly. Blood had spurted from the wounds, but not as much as Allie had expected; Lifeline was either right about the nails' careful placement to avoid crippling her or her blood pressure was so low that she didn't have much blood left in her body. Allie decided she'd rather believe Doc was right.

Lifeline was fumbling a syringe out of his bag, and moments later pressed the needle home into Shana's arm. The redhead went limp seconds later, eyes closed, her face assuming a peaceful expression; Allie sat back on her heels, taking in a shuddering breath as Shana was finally, mercifully, released from her pain.

"All right. I've done as much as I can for right now and she's stabilized. Let's get her back to the chopper." Lifeline was busy opening out the collapsible stretcher he'd brought with him; Snake Eyes moved to take Shana's upper body in his arms and lower her to the stretcher; to their surprise, the big male islander moved to Shana's feet and helped lay her down on the stretcher. Duke took the handles at the bottom of the stretcher, Snake Eyes took the top, and with Lifeline following, the group headed slowly up the stairs back out to the chopper, followed by Allie and the FBI agent.

The Navy's assault team had maybe thirty people lined up against the wall in two groups; one group was plainly native, by the color of skin and frightened faces. The other group were all white; ten of them dressed in paramilitary uniforms—ostensibly the guards—and the naval troops had them kneeling with hands on their heads. Three of them, however, were extremely well-dressed; one man in a wheelchair who Allie recognized from the paperwork as being the owner of the island; one thin, pale, dark-haired man who just gave Allie the creeps; and one woman, the only white woman in the group, with hard, dark eyes and distinctly Italian features. Snake Eyes paused for a moment; just one moment, to look the island's owner up and down, and Allie knew at that moment that Death had marked Damien Kennedy as its own. Over the last few weeks as Snake Eyes had struggled to simply exist without Shana there, Allie had thought that when they finally found Shana, Snake Eyes would kill the person who'd been responsible. Now she was certain.

Allie strode across the room and planted herself in front of the man in the wheelchair. "Get. Up." Her voice was so distorted with hatred she almost didn't recognize it herself. "We had a drone overfly the island three days ago while you were throwing our friend off your fishing platform. I saw you then. You don't need a wheelchair. Get. Up."

"Your friend? You consider slaves friends? You should pick your friends more carefully." And he made no move to get up.

Duke grabbed the handles of the wheelchair and spilled the man out of it. "You really have no idea what you've done, do you?" He folded up the wheelchair, shoved it aside; one of the Navy troopers caught it.

"I asked the slaves who they were and how they knew each other. Under extensive interrogation, the Testarossa finally said she knew the Hole from back when they were on a humanitarian mission in the Congo."

Duke was furious; Allie had never seen him so angry before. "Her name is Shana. I suggest you start using it, because no one is going to tolerate you calling her 'Testarossa'. And no one is going to tolerate you calling Cam 'Hole'." He faced the man squarely. "You'll address them as Master Sergeant Shana O'Hara and Corporal Cameron Arlington, both of the US Army. They were captured while on a humanitarian mission in the Congo. They are not slaves. And you are in very, very deep trouble with the American Government for kidnapping one of their own." He turned to the commander of the naval forces. "Put all of them in the brig."

The commander nodded. "Captain Callahan said we'll keep them prisoner until we arrive back at the San Diego Naval Base. Um…we also told Captain Callahan you have two seriously wounded and he says as soon as your entire team is on the _Columbia_ he's going to arrange to expedite your return back to Fort Hamilton." He saw Duke's look. "Yes, all the way back to Fort Hamilton. The Secretary of Defense called to find out how you all were doing and when he heard that you'd recovered your wounded, he said he'd authorize whatever resources are necessary to get you back to your home base."

Duke nodded. "All right. Go ahead and take the natives back to the main island—I understand the island is their home but at the moment it's the location of a crime and they'll have to stay on the mainland until something is settled regarding the owner of the place."

For the first time the FBI guy interjected. "We at the FBI are going to take charge of the prisoners. Once we get to San Diego Naval Base we'll arrange for a transport to take us to Riker's in New York to pursue federal charges against this man in a place where it'll be easy for your people to testify in case of trial."

Duke didn't argue; he was glad it was satisfactorily settled before he had to start putting plans of his own together. At the moment, he'd rather not have to try to plan anything else; he was still in shock over what Shana had looked like when they'd found her, and he desperately just wanted to follow Snake Eyes and Lifeline and to hell with everything else.

The price of command. If he wanted a command of his own one day he had to put aside thoughts of what he wanted and do what his responsibilities called for. And sometimes people understood and would make your job easier—like this guy in the FBI. "All right. Let's not keep them waiting any longer than necessary." He started off at a fast walk toward the helipad, where Shana, Cam, Snake Eyes, Charlie, Stretcher and Lifeline waited. Allie fell into step on his right, and the FBI guy stepped into place on his left. Duke addressed him briskly. "You'll let me know when you settle this guy in at Riker's? He has a lot to answer for what he's done to two highly-skilled, valuable assets to the U.S. Army."

"We'll give you a call and let you know. Um, First Sergeant…I want you to know…I'm sorry. Shana O'Hara is a valuable asset to the FBI too; she's maintained her clearance with us but we all knew she was dedicated to the Army and her team on your base, and we also knew there was no way she would defect. We knew that even though Homeland Security said otherwise."

It was the closest thing to an apology that Duke had heard from anyone since the whole fiasco started, and he was oddly comforted by it."Thank you," he said, and he meant it as he stopped and shook the FBI agent's hand. "That's the first time in all of this someone has expressed any kind of human compassion."

"Then it's long overdue. Good luck, First Sergeant. Both of your soldiers have a long road ahead of them as far as recovery goes, and I have no doubt that they are in the best of hands to help with that recovery." He saluted Duke as he said, "I'll let you know when we get to New York and we have this piece of crap stowed away at Riker's. Best of luck, First Sergeant."

Duke saluted, and then he and Allie stepped onto the helicopter. Cam and Shana were both unconscious, sleeping apparently peacefully. Charlie was helping Stretcher strap massive bags of ice over Cam's swollen, dislocated shoulders; Snake Eyes was holding Shana's arms and legs steady as Lifeline wrapped bandages around the raw chafe marks on her ankles and wrists.

"Are we all here? All ready to go?"At everyone's nod, Duke swung the helicopter closed. "Let's go home."


End file.
